


Reflection

by shadoedseptmbr



Series: L'essai Et Repose [14]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Adult Language, Gen, game level violence, swearing and other coping methods for the recently revivified
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27884665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadoedseptmbr/pseuds/shadoedseptmbr
Summary: Shepard recruits Jack and it's like running into a mirror, over and over again. She wasn't always Commander Shepard. She wasn't always worth an effort, either.
Series: L'essai Et Repose [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937545
Comments: 34
Kudos: 12





	1. 1

Aedan was focusing on the apple in her hand as the crew filtered in and out of the mess for breakfast. Gardner had attempted something more complex than oatmeal and eggs with the ingredients she’d sourced yesterday and the crew was cautiously enthusiastic. 

She was idly listening to Taylor search through the selection of jams when she felt Miranda before she heard her; the warm buzz of the mess turning quiet. Switching her gaze to watching the coil of apple peel pile up on the table under the knife she’d lifted on her way off the Citadel. 

“Satisfied with your little run back to Daddy, Shepard?”

“Everything I ever dreamed of.” 

“The Illusive Man expected the Council to reinstate you as SPECTRE. Why refuse it? There was a host of resources and it’s a respected position, even in the Terminus. Why trek back to the Citadel if you weren’t going to take it?”

She’d taken SPECTRE status for the Alliance and to chase Saren, because Anderson had encouraged it. Without them…who the fuck cared? ”I missed the lake.”

The muscle in Lawson's pretty cheek flexed, as if she was fighting to not grind her teeth. “Fine. At least look at these. How can you build a team if you don’t know the basic details?”

Aedan glanced at the datapad Miranda had pointedly set in front of her and then up at her “second.” “EDI, these profiles are all in your database, yeah?”

“Yes, Shepard.”

She held Miranda’s gaze. “Any chance one of ‘em is a real biotic? Someone who can, I don’t know, do something simple like yank a mech across the room without telling me how awesome they are or crying about breaking a nail?”

“The prisoner being held in the turian prison, Purgatory, is categorized as a strong human biotic, Commander.”

“Sounds _perfect_.” She took a bite of apple, eyes still locked on Lawson as she chewed and swallowed. “Joker, take us to the cooler. EDI’s got the coordinates.”

“Uh. Aye, Commander. Okay.”

Miranda breathed out heavily through her nose and spun back towards her office, missing the smirk Shepard kept behind another apple slice.

O-o-o-o  


Aedan’s posture was ramrod stiff as they entered the Purgatory airlock.

She’d always hated turian armor. Faceless military drones willing to do anything for honor and duty. Made them predictable but so fucking dangerous. She slouched, purposely, walking hip forward in the laziest manner possible in her own armor and grinned internally when she saw the guards posture stiffen further in reaction. _So_ predictable, though. Fucking bought cops.

“Welcome to Purgatory, Commander Shepard. I’m Warden Kuril.” This turian had one of those well-bred, upper echelon voices, like Garrus and Sparatus. Saren, too. “Jack is being processed while the payment goes through.”

"Payment.”

“Her holding fee. A negligible cost. We aren’t funded by taxpayers, you see, out here in the Terminus.”

The guard blocking her way spoke up. “If you’ll disarm, here, we can continue to the processing wing.”

“Nope.” And she had to admit, both Jacob and Kasumi had nice, quick smooth draws and good stances.

“Commander, it is standard procedure.”

“Not happening. I can put a bullet in your head if it makes the paperwork easier.” She tried to sound accommodating. The Warden stiffened and looked her over.

“Three armed humans don’t seem like they can cause much trouble. The guard is well-trained. Let them through.” He wanted to sound dismissive. Didn’t quite make it, though.

She patted the guard on the pauldron as she slunk past and smirked again at the hiss.

Kasumi paused as the Warden walked away. “Shepard? Not to run your job, but this?”

“Trap, yeah.”

“It’s a pretty well known prison, Commander. I don’t think they’d use it to...” Jacob broke off as she rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure why you brought me, if you don’t trust me.”

She shrugged. “Hostage, in case Cerberus gets ideas about stealing my ship back. I drew, you got short straw.”

Kasumi chortled at the look on Jacob’s face.

“You may be overestimating my value.” Give him credit for rolling with the punch.

“Well, everyone makes mistakes.” She walked past the guard observing a prisoner beatdown, ignoring as Jacob cleared his throat and Kasumi shivered.

She ignored the prisoner trying to get her attention, too, until, “I don’t cost much, lady, please.”

“They’re selling prisoners?” She asked for clarification.

“Yeah, once someone else stops paying our keep.”

“What are you in for?”

“Uh. I murdered some uh, people.”

“Did you?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Right.” She walked on.

There was a tech in the “processing” section who waved them to another door, all the way at the back.

The warden’s voice slid over the comm like honey, bees and all. “Sorry, Commander. There are too many people willing to pay for you.”

The tech was dead before the Warden finished his sentence. She muttered under the Warden’s shouting, “Kasumi, open those…”

A flood of guards came in and Aedan dropped another one, blocking the doors from closing.

Until Jacob snagged him in a too-enthusiastic pull. Aedan growled, “Trying to keep the doors open, Taylor. Prisons don’t have doorknobs.” The next thing through was a Fenris and she and Kasumi crossed overloads and it sat in the door instead.

She guessed she had to be grateful. The warden could have just left them in the section to cool their heels, sending guards in was at least a way out. Bloody, but still a way out.

They slid past the pile of armored corpses, a few smouldering from the explosive end of the mechs.

“Work on that back door while we hold them up,” Shepard ordered Kasumi and Jacob took a defensive position to cover her as she disappeared past the guards.

The door to the security room slid open and Aedan dropped the poor tech left to keep them at bay. She hesitated over the controls, realizing...

“Most of these prisoners are the worst of the worst, Shepard. We can’t let them all out for one.”

“I came here for a reason. Not leaving without it, now.” Warden doesn’t keep his toys, and maybe he spreads a message.

One cryopod slid into the chamber and all of them stared at the delicate features of the human inside.

“That’s Jack?” Jacob was not faking his shock.

Aedan growled as the girl woke up in a panic and after only a moment to gain her bearings started ripping the heavy mechs in front of her to down to components.

“Come on, we’ve got to catch her.” She popped a new heat sink into the sad little Predator Cerberus had provided. _Gotta pick up a better gun. Should’ve done it on the Citadel._

She had to admit, Taylor was better at crowd control when he wasn’t shouting about it. Jack’s wave of destruction had shut him up and between her and Kasumi, the guards’ shields were no trouble to tear down. Not quite the heavy hitters she was used to but...good enough.

Still. None of this was gonna work without a reliable center, a counterweight to pivot around. She’d gotten too used to being the fast hand while Wrex or Kaidan had pulled targets out. She really _was_ going to have to go over those profiles.

Another mech launching missiles dragged her head back into the fight.

Kuril went down, slow but eventually. Shrieking, with Kasumi’s knife in his back and they swung back into the airlock corridor through Jack’s highly convenient back door approach.

Jack was slight and the tattoos were an effective way of blurring her edges, making her hard to target when she moved in erratic patterns. The Cerberus paint on the Normandy clearly throwing her enough that the batarian sneaking up on her didn’t seem to register. Or maybe she’d rather be dead than on a Cerberus ship.

_Fair enough. Better ask, though._

Aedan shot the batarian between his primary eyes and stepped through the ripped hull, trying to ignore another series of explosions beneath her feet. The Normandy was right there. They weren’t...they were fine.

Jack squared up as Shepard yanked to a halt in front of her and felt the hair on the back of her neck raise.

“Who are you? Cerberus freaks, I’m gonna...”

“Maybe we should knock her out?”

“No.” Shepard barked as Jack screamed at Jacob. “Jack, hey. HEY. Look at me.”

She waited until the girl pacing in front of her locked on her gaze. Big brown eyes full of murder and pure terror. _Jesus._ Aedan held her empty hands out to her sides, feet planted wide for balance against the decking beginning to pitch.

“Yeah, it’s a Cerberus built ship. Yes, this guy is in Cerberus colors. _I_ am not fucking Cerberus, that is _my_ ship, and I _am_ your only ticket out of here.”

“If you’re fucking lying…”

“You’ll tear me apart, yeah, I heard you. When’s the last time you ate?”

“Dunno.” Jack twitched a too narrow shoulder. For fuck’s sake her fingers were still blue from cryo but she was _sweating_. Shepard could see her ribs heave with every breath, the pulse at her throat, her corona flickering raggedly. Aedan knew well enough what could happen to a biotic in burn out. Kaidan had a close call or two and she’d learned to watch for it.

This girl was the last flare of an old match.

“Ok. Well, if nothing else, there’s a decent kitchen and a bar aboard.” She let her tone wheedle,”Come on, this place is filled with pissed off turians with grenade launchers and I’m pretty sure you destroyed something vital back there besides the mess hall. Let’s go. I’ll drop you off at the nearest planet with breathable atmo if you don’t like the scene.”

“I want access to...files...whatever Cerberus has I want it.”

“Copy. I will get you the data you want if I have to hack it out of the database myself.”

“Commander, I don’t think the Illusive Man is...”

“If I have to hack EDI with a prybar.” Aedan confirmed and Kasumi nodded, her eyes gleaming under the shadow of her hood.

“Fine.” She jerked back as Taylor reached to open the hatch, with a snarl. “Don’t touch…”

Aedan slid between them in a blink, forcing Taylor back. “Uh uh. No one’s touching you without your permission, Jack. Through that hatch.” Shepard jerked her chin in the direction of the Normandy. “Joker, we wanna bug out as soon as the airlock cycles.”

“Ready to go, Commander. Uh, preferably before that station blows. You know, if you wanna hurry.”

She ignored Taylor behind her, muttering to Kasumi. “I didn’t realize Shepard could talk that much at one time.”

“Not all thieves are chatty like me, Jacob.” Kasumi’s voice was teasing.

“Shepard is a decorated Alliance officer, not a…”

“Oh, trust me. Pro knows pro. She’s a little out of practice, maybe.”

Beneath them, the Normandy gathered itself for acceleration and Aedan tried to force the tension out of her spine as cryopods shot out into space while the station vented atmosphere and silent explosions flared and disappeared behind them.

Half an hour later, the Normandy drifting between systems, Shepard watched Jack stalk back and forth across the conference room. “Jack, it takes a fucking minute to compile the data you want. At least eat while we wait. You don’t even have to sit down.”

“Why are you so fucking concerned about me eating?” But she grabbed the bowl of pasta Gardner had sent up and stuffed a bite into her mouth.

“Because I need you to be able to fling shit around without passing out, that’s why I came to get you, remember?”

“What do you know about it?”

“More than I care to, seriously. Eat. I can’t finish this with you fucking hovering.” Maybe this had been a stupid idea. What was she gonna do with this...unstable...

“Well, it looks like someone on board can finally hold a conversation on your erudite level, Shepard.” Miranda strolled into the conference room, interrupting Aedan’s train of thought. “You don’t have clearance for the information you're trying to access and you won’t…”

EDI murmured over the comm, “Access granted, Commander. Downloading now.”

“Shut it, Cerberus bitch.” Jack managed to snicker around her lunch.

Shepard smirked at the pad but she tutted as she typed, “Aw, Jack. Don’t bring dogs into it. There are better ways to insult our delightful Ms. Lawson.”

Jack poked her fork at Miranda. “She’s a biotic, too. I can feel it. So was that other Cerberus asshole. Why'd you need me?”

“Because I’ve tried them out and it makes me _sad_ , Jack, that that was the best Cerberus could find to bribe me with. They keep telling me they’re giving me their best. You did more damage half frozen and starving than those two do combined. Anyway, like Miranda said, I need more colorful conversation to keep me enriched. Catch.”

Jack set aside the empty bowl and held her hands out for the data pad Shepard tossed across the room. “Is this everything?”

“If it doesn’t have what you want, we’ll dig up more.”

She clutched it to her chest. “I’m going down to the hold.”

Shepard nodded. “There’s a set of stairs below engineering. It’s pretty tight but there’s a cot down there.” Fewer access points, easier to watch, walls at your back; she got it. It was warmer down there, too. And since Jack had refused a uniform (lucky her) or anything else to supplement her strapping, it was the only thing Aedan could think of to keep her from freezing. Kaidan had run hot, maybe Jack did, too, when she was decently fed. Aedan forced herself to keep her eyes open, to not shut them as the memory tried to suck her under. _Not here. Not ever._

“Keep your people off me.” Jack grunted and stalked out of the room.

Lawson whirled on her. “She’s a maniac with no control. Her biotic field is nothing but chaos. Surely you aren’t seriously thinking about using her on mission?”

Miranda held her ground under Aedan’s stare and finally, Aedan shrugged. “We’re heading to that ping we got on the Blood Pack. Deserted planet, some sort of indigenous critter. I’ll run her paces before I use her on anything delicate.”

“Shepard, we need to get to Omega and find Mordin Solus.”

“Not ready.” They did need the scientist. And a better gun hand. And a fucking tank. _God._

“The Collectors…”

“Won’t hit so soon after the last, if their pattern holds.” Hopefully.

There was a creak and grinding from the elevator shaft as it dropped and even Aedan could feel the gravity well shift as Jack made her way below decks.

“We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t tear the ship apart on a whim.” Lawson grumbled. Probably practiced that pout in a mirror. God knows, Aedan had. Pout was useful, in the right circumstance.

“She’s _on_ the ship, for Christ’s sake, she isn’t stupid. Feed her, keep her happy, and we’ll see.” Aedan twitched a shoulder, “It’s working for me, isn’t it?”

“You can’t destroy things with your mind, Shepard.”

A low, humorless laugh sent a visible shiver up Miranda’s spine and for a half second, Aedan felt a little better.

“You don’t have a fucking clue what I could do if I really got tired of you.” Shepard followed her foundling out of the conference room.

_Out. I need...away. For a minute._ She froze, remembering. _Fuck._ She’d just sent Jack to the only hide on the ship.

“Commander?”

Aedan turned to see Jacob in the door of the Armory and swallowed another growl. _Stupid_ fucking place for an armory. Blow the hell out of CIC if anyone had a mind to do it. “Yeah?”

He squared up, soldier on the deck expecting a keelhaul. “Commander, I would not have touched Jack.”

“I know.”

“Then why…”

“Used her suspicion of your outfit to make her think I’m on her side.” Aedan kept her stare level and dared him to make an issue of it.

“I...see. You are not exactly what I expected, Commander.” She let him scan her as if he were trying to read her mind. Good luck. It had made Liara pretty sick the times she’d tried it. “We need a team to work together, we need to trust each other.”

She twitched a shoulder and stalked off to the CIC, ignoring his sigh.


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard's not exactly coping, but she gets to shoot things.

Shepard hit the elevator, ignoring Kelly’s soft, chiming, _insidious_ voice, and paced the three steps across and back until it stopped on the top floor. The loft cabin, EDI had called it. 

The door, keyed to her presence, slid open silently and she paused on the landing, fighting not to waver on her feet. She reached up to rub the aching thud under her sternum.

She should lay down. She’d made Jack eat, but she hadn’t. The apple she’d had this morning probably hadn’t gone far. 

Her drill sergeant in her memory: _sleep when you can eat when you can because you don’t know when you will next gotta keep the machine fed the Alliance spent a lotta money getting you._..

One look at that bed under the swirl of stars made her want to vomit.

She dropped down into the desk chair instead and the holo frame on the desk flickered. _Kaidan._

She stared at him, heart thudding. Whoever had taken the pic had the light hit his eyes so they were lit like sunlight through whiskey. The square of his jawline, that little scar he’d never told her where he got it, she hadn’t asked because she’d wanted... _Oh, God, Kaidan where are you..._

Some pathetic noise must have escaped her. EDI’s interface popped up. "Commander Shepard, are you in need..."

Shepard was on her feet reaching for a gun that she wasn’t carrying. “Shut down. Get out or I’ll...OUT.” She reached out and flung the framed holo at the interface.

It didn’t even flicker as the metal frame dented, the plasglass shattered, and tumbled to the floor. The AI twittered, “Private mode engaged, Commander.”

“Fuck you.” She dug her palms into her eyesockets. Her mouth tasted like she’d been sucking on old copper wiring. She’d caught a slug from that last mech, reflected off her helmet and knocked her head back against the wall she’d been skirting. The headache was gone, it didn’t hurt, but her heartbeat still rattled. 

She should brush her teeth, get rid of the blood, the grit of the tooth chips. She should go back down. Back to the CIC. Be in charge. Can’t let Lawson look like...

_Can’t let them see...this._

She stared through the glass display case, muscles so tight her teeth chattered, her hands shook and her pulse echoed in her ears. _Got to get hold of a gun._ Something Taylor wasn’t tracking from his perch in the armory. 

Omega. She’d passed through Omega once or twice, before. Before when she was... She might even have a credit cache left, in another name. Enough to disappear. Enough to…

The datapad on the desk flickered with an update, Kasumi’s record replaced with Jack’s.

Jack. Fucking biotic nutcase. But...

She couldn’t...she _couldn’t_ leave Jack with Cerberus. Even if what she’d said about being used before was wrong...Cerberus would eat her alive, now. Admiral Kohoku’s body flashed against the backs of Aedan’s eyelids in a pool of red as she found herself pressing the heels of her palms into them, again. 

Chakwas. Joker. 

They were here because of her. If she disappeared. What would Cerberus do...to lure her back?

Which one of them had told Cerberus about Kaidan? Wasn’t a lucky guess on their part. 

Or had she talked on that hospital slab she’d woken up on? Called his name? Cried? Begged him to make it stop? 

She thought she might have, before. When... 

Her breathing had gone harsh and fast and she tore herself away from the starfield she was staring at again, the loop of thought, and managed to hit the toilet before she threw up. 

Joker’s voice filtered through the comm as she huddled over the metal bowl, her knees cold through the padding of the tac pants, pressed against the decking.

“Commander, you wanted a heads up when we hit the Fathar System.” 

She spat again before she answered. “Yeah. Have the AI start scanning planets for…” she drew a blank for a minute for what... “For the palladium.” If they were manufacturing their own gear, they’d need a decent array of basic materiel.

“Aye, ma’am. Commander…Shepard...” Joker’s voice had gone a little hesitant. Soft.

 _No fucking way._ “What?” She snapped.

“Uh. Nothing. EDI’s scanning.” 

On my way down.” She tore at the fasteners of the Cerberus gear to get back in her armor. 

O-o-o-o-o

“So. What’s with your face?” Jack asked as they strolled down the landing ramp that led to Omega’s main hall. 

Taylor choked on a cough, and stared at Jack, “Really?”

Aedan shrugged. “Fuck if I know. Lawson screwed up when they rebuilt me, I guess. Cybernetics didn’t heal right or something.” Chakwas had said something about attitude. 

It looks like hell.” She gave Shepard a sideways smirk that showed a tooth. “Like you aren’t even human.”

“Great. Maybe it’ll make the gangs think twice.”

“Seriously. What are we doing here again? I mean, I always liked Omega, it’s homey but it doesn’t seem like your sort of dive.”

“Picking up some new faces. One of ‘em is a scientist supposed to help with the details. Other two are mercs or something.”

“That’s vague.”

Aedan shrugged, again.

Jack turned her gaze on their companion. “Fuck, Taylor. I thought Cerberus was supposed to be all fingers in every pie. They can’t even give us decent locations and information on the crew they want us to pick up?”

“I wasn’t in charge of the dossiers collected for this mission. I don’t know which cell did that. I can try to find out.” He threw it out there, obviously expecting to be shut down. Used again to triangulate Jack’s interest.

Aedan nodded, not bothering to turn her head. “Yeah. Find out.”

“I’ll do that.” And he looked confused again. 

_Good._ He and Lawson had been cozied up in the armory before Taylor had joined them in the airlock. LIke as not , Miranda had been whining about her choice to bring Jack on this field trip. Or maybe they were just fucking. Who knew. 

The batarian who’d pushed aside the strung-out salarian directed them to Aria T’loak. The name pinged a memory but the few times Aedan had been to Omega, she’d been running undercover, trying not to be noticed. This asshole had known her name. “Either of you run into this Aria, before?”

Jacob shook his head but Jack grunted. “Yeah. She’s the HBIC around here. For forever, as far as I know.”

A name like T’loak, she was asari. Maybe she _had_ been in charge forever. Since humans were figuring out electricity, at least.

A ping on her omni drew Aedan’s attention before the AI spoke over comms, “The information I’ve been able to glean for Aria T’loak, Commander.” She had just started to scan it when another batarian stumbled in front of her; his face a bloody mess, pushed from behind by…

Oh. Good. This was one of the mercs, she recognized the scarred face from the file. _Which one..._

“You Commander Shepard?” He had an Earther accent. 

“Yeah.” Either Archangel or Massani. This guy didn’t look like he’d even seen an angel painted in a book. “Massani?”

He grunted an affirmative, giving the batarian on the floor a nudge with his boot. “I need to take care of this. You were taking your time, figured I’d pick up a bounty while I was waiting.” 

“Sure.” She poked her thumb behind her. “Ship’s that way. I got a couple stops to make before we head out.” She watched him wrap a scarred hand in the batarian’s jacket and haul him up. “Hey, got any tips about Aria?”

“Avoid.” Grunted over his shoulder.

“Great. Thanks.” She watched as Massani dragged the unconscious bounty down the corridor. 

“Well. That was...efficient.”

Aedan huffed a reluctant laugh at Jacob’s understatement. “I’m sure there’s gonna be some sort of complication, always is.” 

They waited for the janky airlock to cycle, pause for a rest, and then jerk open into the filthy center of Omega. It was...pretty much like she recalled. Dim, dank from over worked air recyclers. Loud as fuck. Crowded, with hunched shouldered people who barely looked up from their shoes.

She stalked past the line for the club, pausing long enough to pick up the beat from the interior soundsystem and then following her memory down the promenade. There were some decent scrap shops down in the tunnels on this side of Omega, at least there had been. Might pick up a piece there. Or find the refit couplings that the engineers had wanted.

“We aren’t checking in, first?”

“I don’t do beck and call for anyone who isn’t paying me.” If Aria’s got a problem with it she can come looking. She flicked a hand to the queue of complaining denizens wearing club gear. “You’re welcome to wait in line.”

Taylor looked like he might prefer waiting but he followed her and Jack down to the dregs, anyway, following the sound of vorcha laughter. Here in the warrens, she could’ve been back in D.C. Neon, the low hanging fug of smoke and humidity, the endless grey walls, and general sense of crumbling infrastructure.

A lot of Omega reminded her of the old days. Even smelled like D.C. in the summer.

The batarian stooge cased them for the hour that Aedan wandered, maybe far enough back that anyone less paranoid wouldn’t have noticed. Her old stash was gone, no real surprise in a place like this. Some poor quarian kid had tried to build a shop in remnant of the torn down flat. She had tried to gin up enough interest in him to care why he was stuck here, it didn’t really seem like Pilgrimage territory though he sounded like he might be Tali’s age...Tali’s age two years ago. Tali’s warning about Cerberus repeated in her ear, under the rush of blood through new veins.

She shook her head, trying to shake it away. It had been...eh...five maybe six years since she’d set foot on Omega, running down a connection. She needed these new people, if only to keep Taylor back on the ship, long enough to track down some personal equipment. If she was lucky, someone would start a fight and she could pick one up. No trace had always been the Reds’ motto.

Jack laughed harshly as they finally approached the main door of Afterlife, bypassing the line to the vocal disapproval of the waiting horde. The beat, electronic and layered to lull, entrance pounded in Aedan’s chest, a counterpoint to the horrible, steady thud of her heartbeat in her ears. 

"I'll catch up," Jack’s smile was dark and eager when Aedan caught her eye.

“Fuck ‘em quick, ok? Don't make me come looking. Try not to take anything you can't shake in an hour or so.”

“Ok, mom.” She watched Jack slink into the crowd. 

From her shoulder, Taylor asked, “Is that a good idea?”

“Probably not. Play babysitter while I chat up our host.” It didn’t surprise Aedan at all when Taylor stuck to her heels.

She grabbed a drink from a vacant eyed human bartender on her way up to the VIP section of Afterlife, ignoring Jacob’s protest. Something green. It was too sweet like most alien liquor and thick but it left a pleasant sear on the way down, like a cough syrup surprise from the old days. Similar backleg kick, too, though it burned off fast as her head spun for a moment and then cleared. She doubled back for another. _Nothing you can’t shake in an hour._

She managed to lift an eyebrow at the scan the bouncer ran, the whine in her ears as it skimmed her face louder than her pulse. She kept her gaze locked on the asari in front of her who was concentrating really hard on being uninterested. 

Aria was hot in the way a lot of older asari were hot, Aedan had to admit. Maybe it was all the white leather. Probably took a few hundred years to figure out the knack of keeping it clean. 

Sure fucking liked to hear herself talk, though. She rolled her eyes as the spiel went on and heard Jack snicker. Must have been slim pickings down on the floor. The last slurp of her drink through the stirrer drowned out Aria’s question.

“What? You lost me somewhere around...I dunno. Something about your clubhouse rules.”

“What. Do. You. Want?”

“Oh. Looking for a merc named...uh...Archangel and a salarian doctor.” She tried to focus past the heartbeat in her ears as Aria actually spouted useful information. Join the mercs downstairs to get to Archangel. Find the doctor in the plague ridden apartment block they’d walked past, earlier. Guards would let them in, probably.

Okay. 

The priority was the doctor, for a scientist who could start to chip away some of the mystery around the buglike probes that had frozen the colonists on Freedom’s Progress. Aedan paused in front of the hiring line for the mercs. Nah. Whoever Archangel was, they’d managed to live this long. If worse came to worse, that bounty hunter looked like he could handle a gun and she might be able to negotiate a better deal than Cerberus had offered. 

Jacob muttered as they walked away. “Some of those so called mercs looked like teenagers. All they are is cannon fodder.”

Aedan swallowed a laugh as Jack snorted, “I was brawling in pit fights by the time I was ten.”

“Eleven. Covering a corner for a deal that went south.” 

“Yeah? Hunh.” Something flickered in Jack’s expression before it shuttered again.

Jacob’s dark eyes lingered on her back as Aedan strolled off for the apartment block.

o-o-o-o-o

Gunfire made the relentless thudding in her chest quieter, the gun in her hand steadied the shake.

Omega’s gangs were better armed than they had been, the last time she’d clashed with them in the bowels of the station. Between this and the wreck she’d made of the prison, the Blue Suns were going to be gunning for her, especially. 

Problem for another day. Probably.

Jack sent another set of them flying with a rolling biotic attack, nothing like Aedan had ever seen.

Well. One of the vids Gerte had loved. Rich people on Earth back a long time before Contact. Dogs flushing birds out of brush up in the air to shoot. It was like that, a little bit. Scatter and shoot. Scatter and shoot. 

Gerte. Gerte might know if she was...if this was real. For a minute, her heartbeat drowned out the shriek of vorcha. The grunting of the krogan with the shotgun. The blue whips of biotics sizzling through the air.

Heat scorched across the left side of her armor, indicators screaming, and she rolled to the right, cloaked to come up behind the sneaking vorcha to punch a hole in the canister with a neatly placed shot. Jacob yanked it out of her range before the compromised canister exploded bits of vorcha across the room. Jack, swearing behind them as she brushed gut and ember off of her skin drew a smirk even as Aedan’s nerves sizzled.

Took a few tries to get the rhythm but they found it. Taylor didn’t do bad either, one on one. _Still need a better tank._

The last wounded krogan charged and Aedan grinned- stretching the fissures in her cheeks until they stung again- as she flung her cloaked body between him and Taylor. The new body didn’t even rock on impact. _Okay...that? That she could get used to._ Might have to try it with one who wasn’t half dead, already. 

She clocked the krogan in that too weak spot just under the second heart Wrex had once pointed out with the butt of her rifle, snarling, and he clattered to the floor for Jack to finish with a shotgun blast to the face. 

The empty corridor went silent again as Aedan compacted the rifle back into carrying position. With the exception of Jack breathing fast, Taylor trying to decide on their next direction, and that damned heartbeat coming back. She whipped her head and her pistol to the left, a moan drawing her attention to the slumped figure next to the corridor.

Crossfire...ah. No.

“Get away from me.” His protest was weak through the foam flecked spit around his mouth. The batarian was way off color, if her memory of skin tones was accurate. Aedan recalled some of the slaves who’d died at that wretched chem dump on Anhur had been about this shade of dull blue green. 

Of course, they’d been human, once upon a time.

“Fine by me.” 

Jack was already halfway down the corridor and Aedan stepped out to catch her. 

“Commander? You think he might know something about Solus?” Jacob was staring at the dying batarian like he might be having sympathy pains. For a batarian. 

It struck her that Taylor was really bad at being a Cerberus goon.

She jerked her thumb down the corridor, where she could hear the occasional ping of gunfire. “He’s this direction. Do we need to know anything else?”

“Walk away, human. You’re all the same. Think you’ll wipe out the competition on Omega and it’s...” The batarian hacked up more spittle, flecked now with greyish blue blood. “Easy...pickings”

Aedan paused. Glanced back. “You know that for a fact? Humans caused this?”

“There are already... humanscum picking the corpses in the...apartments of the dead. Only human and vorcha are immune.”

She had to admit, she’d never met a vorcha who could pull off something like this. “So, I’ll go find out.” 

“It won’t matter. It’s too late.” He wheezed behind her. 

She was almost down the corridor, Taylor trailing behind, when the batarian started choking again, sounding like one of the wrecked barflies who’d clustered in the bars when she used to collect protection money. Sometimes one of them would fish a bright red cherry out of a drink to hand to her. She spun on her heel, still tasting the acrid sweet on the back of her tongue. Medigel might patch up his lungs until he could crawl to the clinic.

“What….”

“I’ll let the clinic know you’re here or you can try getting there. Give it about a half hour, gotta clear out the _scum_ first.” All four liquidly dark eyes were focused on her as she connected her armor’s med unit with a port on his arm, the omnitool’s fabricator quickly making an acceptable connector for what looked like a drug receiver. 

“Why?”

 _I don’t know. Kaidan would have._ She tipped her head towards Taylor. “I don’t want him looking at me like I shot his puppy for the next two hours, it’s a drag.” She rolled back up off her heels. “Half an hour. Or not.” She stalked back off into the gloom of the corridor.


	3. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Picking up Solus, trying to patch herself up with a little help from Chakwas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little detail of an injury, medical intervention. Not massively graphic but maybe a little more icky than usual.

Aedan spun the wheel open on the wall safe as Jack watched, shifting her weight from foot to foot as she tried to decide whether to just ask. 

“Where’d you learn to do that?” Rapid shot, like she just couldn’t stand not knowing.

“Earth.” 

“Yeah but...like..they don’t teach that shit in Alliance school or whatever?”

Aedan huffed a reluctant laugh, felt like rust in her lungs. “Nah. Gang.” 

_“You_ were in a gang. For real? What like, you loitered on street corners and shoplifted lip gloss?” She could feel Jack’s eyes scanning her for ink. There wasn’t much showing in armor for her to catch on. 

Between lasers and Lazarus, there wasn’t anything left, anyway.

“Something like that.” 

“What’d mummy and daddy think of that?” Jack’s posh accent needed work. Sounded like she got it from a vid. 

“You find ‘em you can ask ‘em.” She reached back into the corner of the safe, sweeping out an old chit that scanned for almost 2000 credits. Aedan slid it into the pocket worked into the edge of her gauntlet. It felt like a backdoor and her pulse quieted a little. 

Taylor, covering them from the door finally stopped clearing his throat and just asked, “Commander?

“Yeah?”

“We’ve got sufficient funds for anything…”

“I don’t feel like writing expense reports for my underwear.” 

“You got expensive tastes?” This time Jack’s glance down her back was speculative and Aedan repressed a shudder, her heartbeat pounding in her ears again. She licked her dry lips before she managed a response. 

“Might develop some, never know. C’mon, I can smell antiseptic, we can’t be too far from our stop.” 

The clinic was buzzing, at least a dozen patients of varying races in makeshift cots in the lobby. Mostly human nurses covering the duties. 

“Looking for Solus?” She grunted an affirmative at the clerk behind the desk, eyeing the mechs covering him. 

“Third door on the left. Move slowly, he’s got the mechs cued up tight and he’s uh, kinda high strung.“

Hmm. “Thanks.”

Whatever med talk the salarian was chittering about went way over Aedan’s first aid training. The names of the drugs slotted into her mental filing system though, the bit about the heplodine being toxic to humans getting a little flag. 

Solus immediately tried to catalog them in an almost familiar fashion as he swung a bioscanner in their general direction. 

Aedan waved her hand as the salarian’s voice started sliding into “only dogs could hear him” territory. “Hey...hey, stop. You don’t have to guess. My name’s Shepard. I don’t care about the plague, I’m here to recruit you for a mission, looking into some colonies being taken by Collectors.” 

His head with it’s oddly shaped horn jerked towards her when she named the aliens, his dark eyes narrowing curiously, but he shook it off. “Can’t leave now. Plague spreading too fast. Who are you with?”

“This is a Cerberus project.”

“Cerberus? Heard of them. Working with other species. Peculiar.”

“Yeah, you aren’t wrong. But they hired me so I guess they aren’t real picky.” 

Solus pondered her a minute. “Collectors might have the knowledge to engineer this plague, suspected them, actually. Have developed a cure, but vorcha are holding the environmental control hub needed.’

“You need me to kill the vorcha. Got it.” Aedan started to swing around and head out.

“Would be…” There was a clunking metallic sound from the air vents and the constant whir of air handlers shut down, leaving an ominous silence.

“That seems bad.” Jacob muttered behind her.

“Vorcha trying to kill everyone now, Shepard. We have limited time.”

For fuck’s sake. “Great. Stopwatches are always fun.” Aedan tried hard to pull up a reason to care about the remaining citizens of the district, find a latch onto how she’d have felt about it before. Commander Shepard, ready to save the day. Again.

Her heartbeat thudded loudly in the numb fog starting to thicken in her head.

Solus brought her up short with a cough. “Should also mention my assistant, Daniel. Went to the wards to try and bring in victims, earlier. Has missed his check in. Twice.”

“Yeah,” she cut off the salarian before he could rattle off another dissertation. “I’ll look for your boy too. Jesus.”

“Would be appreciated.” He waved his hand over at the table, spread with a few discarded instruments, a box of used heat sinks. “In return, picked that up off a Blue Suns merc. You are welcome to take it.” 

Aedan picked up the pistol he’d indicated, checking the balance. It was negligibly heavier, but the grip was suited to her long fingered, smaller hand. “This use the same clips?” She checked the thermal clip slide. 

Another odd look. “All standard, yes.”

She gave the slide an experimental tug and smiled at the easy, smooth glide. Better than the hard tug she’d had to give the piece of crap Cerberus had offered. “Thanks.”

“Commander…”

“What? Do you need someone to overhaul your bone knitter, now?”

The salarian waved his bioscanner over her. “Short temper, dull skin, pallor. You are exhibiting several symptoms of fatigue and low blood sugar. Should eat something before you leave.” 

“Yeah, Shepard, you should eat something.” Jack parroted.

She flipped open a hidden panel on her arm and tossed Jack and then Taylor one of the three bite biotic ration bars she’d stashed, ripping open and cramming a third in her mouth and swallowing. “Fine. Let’s go.” She cracked her canteen to wash it down as she stalked off towards the exit.

“That’s a hell of a non existent gag reflex, fuck me.” Jack shared a glance with Jacob, who was looking at the wrapper of the bar he’d been tossed. “What?”

“Nothing.” He tore it open with a shrug. “It’s strawberry.” 

“So?”

“It’s my favorite.”

Jack glanced at the one she’d been given. “Hunh. Chocolate. Everyone likes that, though.” 

“I’m allergic.”

“Let’s go!”

 _Somewhere in there was a real marine_ , Aedan grinned to herself as Jacob’s body was moving before his brain caught up.

One corner turned and another and a small skirmish and there was Solus' assistant. Surrounded by batarans and pistols. Aedan held her hand up, motioning her squad down behind the half wall. She glanced at the field. Three batarians, good angles. Not a complicated hit. She caught the indicator light on her omni pop up and made up her mind.

She sauntered in, leaving Jack and Jacob to follow. “He's telling the truth, you know? He really is just trying to help.” 

All the guns reoriented on her and Aedan grinned, happy to have their attention. “What's your business here, human?” 

“I'm just here to find a lost puppy and fix the air handlers. General maintenance, y’might say.”

“Why bother?” 

“Ain't that the question of the day.” She wasn't sure what she was even doing here. One scientist for all this? There had to be easier ways to recruit people. Hell, the gangs just put up a table in the bar. 

There was certainly one faster. Her hands were free of her gun. And then it was in her hand. The angles seemed to sketch themselves in the air in front of her. She had always been able to play the angles.

The trigger of the new pistol was beautifully fine tuned and Solus was right, the food had helped steady her hands. 

But the sights were off. She jerked her head “Check him.”

Jacob shook off his shock to kneel besides the medic, now whining on the floor with his hand clutching his shoulder in the middle of three dead batarians. Jack had managed to yank the one Aedan had winged into a wall at just the right angle to break his neck. 

“You...you shot them!” Jacob grunted as he patched the ricochet wound on the medic’s arm

“Yeah.” 

“But…why?” 

“Faster. We’re out of time.” She glanced away from the medic’s pale face as Jacob helped him up down to the omni prompt at her wrist, showing the breathable mix of the air falling. “C'mon. Things are starting to get stuffy.” She stuck her head out the door and glanced behind them. “The path behind us is clear, you should be able to make it back. Solus is expecting you.” 

The maintenance hallways they crept down were crammed with vorcha. Highly armed, typically bad tempered and violent vorcha. She was going to have to read up on the species if she was going to be in contact with them much in the Terminus system. It took Aedan a minute to realize they were screeching about plans; Collectors, some sort of agreement to keep Omega distracted while they worked the fringes. Maybe the vorcha were just under the threshold for Reaper attention? Who knew.

The occasional krogan, the usual leadership for Blood Pack types back in the day, spiced up the resistence but the fucking flamethrowers were getting on her last nerve. “Neither of you can shut these guys down?” She hissed over comms. “Keep those fucking missiles off me so I can line up a shot for fuck’s sake.” She couldn't cloak and leave them to themselves, neither of them had a shield worth mentioning. Last time she came out without another gun, Cerberus protocol could fuck itself.

Her hands were shaking from the last near miss, but she compensated enough to drop the last missile launcher and give them all enough breathing room to make it to the air handler. She shucked her helmet for a minute trying to keep the echo of her heartbeat quieter.

Jacob glanced her over. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Got some feedback or something in the comms. It’ll be fine.”

The still air left the metallic taste of circuitry in the air from the continuous buzz of dark energy and Aedan shook her head to clear it as she refixed her seals and advanced. Maybe it was something in the cybernetics? She didn’t recall being so sensitive to Liara or Wrex’s biotics. 

Kaidan’s...well. She had a different perspective on his. Her awareness of him had been…

The shotgun blast brought her up short and she just made it to a strut for cover as her shields whined. 

_Jesus. Out of the clouds, Shepard._ She had the nifty new pistol in hand but the krogan was buffing the vorcha somehow...shield boost built into his armor, maybe? She took advantage of Jacob’s next attack and a burst of fire from Jack to glance down at her omni, looking for the indication of a booster she could interfere with. _Might be a way to worm an overload program into the feed...ah._ Sparks flew and she grinned as she caught the vorcha right between his bulgy eyes and Jack scattered them again. 

Another knot of shielded vorcha was dug in at either side of the last air handler station. The fire came fast and thick, blasts of suppressing flames every few seconds. 

Aedan gritted her teeth as she glanced at her emptied reserves and murmured over the comm unit. “Gimme one more of those scatter things, Jack. Taylor...if you can get a hold on that last krogan, just get him off his feet. On three.”

She got a panting grunt from Jack. It had been a long fight for someone not used to it. A tight “Ma’am.” from Taylor.

A singularity and a couple of frag grenades wouldn’t have hurt either. The grenades she could probably scrape up, though. She waited as her shields scaled back up again and…”one, two.” 

She stepped out of cover on three. The pyro lit her up, giving her squaddies a second to duck out of cover and line up their shots. 

Aedan growled, ignoring the squeals of her indicators, as she emptied the pistol’s clip into the krogan at her feet and pushed forward into the alcove lined with machinery, yanking off the helmet and its ruined, half-melted faceplate. “Come on, over here. EDI, this it?” 

“Yes, Commander. Inserting Dr. Solus’ cure and resetting the hub here will allow it to distribute throughout the block.” There was a slight pause before the AI continued, “Commander, your armor indicates you have been injured.” 

“False reading EDI, it’s fine. Armor got a little cooked.” _Great_. As her hands worked, she refought the last few minutes in her head. Miranda had been able to work an overload program. Probably should have brought her in, instead of having to fling them herself. Or Kasumi. Might have been able to dodge the fight and get it done. 

_Gonna have to start running simulations in the cargo bay._ She didn’t know their abilities much less their _limits_. Jack was looking a little pale, Jacob’s hand was shaking but he was taking a moment to suck down a glucose pack. Her eyes on him had him toss one over to Jack. She wouldn’t have had to remind... _fuck, gotta stop that_.

As she plugged in the vial, and tapped out a start up sequence, she murmured, “EDI, start setting up sims for a four mate variant on typical attack patterns. Give me alternatives on squad member rotations, look for statistical weaknesses. I want reads by the time we get back to the ship.” 

“Yes, Commander.” 

“Commander…”

“What?” She glanced up at her squad and reflexively . “It’s not on you. You both did good. I like the standard marine set up better. Shouldn’t have to rely on you to hold center.”

“You’ve...Damn, that’s nasty looking, ma’am.” Jacob tried to draw her attention to the burns searing across her throat, cheekbones and started to blister. Some of the blisters had burst when she’d yanked her helmet free. There was a similar runny feeling down her left shoulder. 

“Fuck, Shepard.”

“S’fine. I’ll patch at the clinic. Solus looked like a solid enough medic.” It hurt more now that they were looking at her like it should. Probably mild adrenaline poisoning. She’d run on that before, though. It would get her back to the clinic. Maybe all the way to the ship.

And then Chakwas would fix her up. _Maybe with drugs. Drugs might be nice_. She shook her head. 

_Later._

Solus was reasonably appreciative of their efforts even as his assistant muttered about the batarians in the background.

“Shepard was right. Unreasonable to leave an enemy alive and armed at your back, Daniel.”

“Doctor! How can you say that?”

“Be practical, Daniel. I will leave you the mechs. Try not to second guess their targeting software.” 

Aedan let Miranda give the salarian the grand tour, let him chitter away at EDI as they settled him into the lab and she managed not to limp into the medbay. She’d been a marine too long, letting her weapons get in bad shape was unacceptable.

“Commander...Good God!” The doctor’s face blanked into professional mode but not quite fast enough for Aedan to miss the shock as she shucked the ruined armor and left it in a pile in Chakwas’ immaculate workspace. 

“It’s fine, Doc.” Reflexively as she let the doctor help her up on an exam table.

“It really isn’t.” Chakwas ran a scanner over the blistered skin, the stretched and flaking bits of dermis trying to heal, already. 

“Yeah, someone coulda mentioned that vorcha are suddenly firebugs, it woulda been n…”

“Stop talking. Let me work.” She jammed a hypo into the side of Aedan’s neck that wasn’t red and puffy.

Aedan breathed in, the sudden relief of pain shocking enough to bring tears to her eyes. “Uuf.”

“Yes, I would think so.” She worked in blessed silence for a few minutes and Aedan mentally thanked her pulse for staying properly down in her chest where it belonged. Chakwas fiddled in a cabinet and came back, starting to smooth a cooling paste across the already healing burns as the meds started to wear off. She flinched as Chakwas got to one of the blisters.

“This gonna be a thing? The drugs not working?” 

“Hmm," the doctor hummed an affirmative as she worked. "Probably a side effect of the cybernetics; speeding up your metabolism to remove toxins, trying to keep your equilibrium. I’ve been looking into the data Miranda’s provided. I’m afraid it’s going to wreak havoc if you ever find yourself seriously injured. Perhaps with Dr. Solus aboard we can begin to look for solutions before that occurs.” 

It was the first lesson she’d ever learned in boot camp. _Maintain the weapon, it no longer belongs to you it belongs to the Alliance._ They’d drilled it in to all of them, trying to overcome the natural tendencies of a bunch of over-adrenalized teenagers who thought they were immortal and she'd been careful to emphasize it with her own team. Even with the AI always present, she had to say something. Aedan forced it out in a whisper between her teeth.. “Doc...I can’t sleep.” 

Chakwas’s fingers stilled on her face. 

“I dunno if it’s...I just…my reaction time is off.”

“Not sleeping would explain some of these readings.” She finished her work across Aedan’s face and with a sigh, took up a pair of shears and slit open the undershirt Aedan had left on to start the paste working on her collarbone. “You’re also in desperate need of a decent meal. Alright. Well, I can offer you something for that but if it’s a recurring problem…and it may have the same problem as pain relief, not a long term solution.” 

The goo let her smirk hurt less than she expected. “This ain’t the Alliance, Doc, you can’t ground me here for skipping psych. And I’m not talking to that...yeoman.” 

“I’ve checked her credentials, Shepard. She is who she says she is and very well trained.” The shears clipped up the sleeve of the bad shoulder and the air hitting the weeping blisters, the skin stuck to the fabric, had Aedan chewing the inside of her cheek before Chakwas had the paste smeared and cooling it off.

She had to take a deep breath through her nose and out of her mouth before she could manage, “Don’t care. I can smell squirrel all over her, she’s not square.”

“Or you’re not sleeping and you’ve developed a certain amount of paranoia.” Chakwas sighed. “I’ll take your judgement for now, Commander. I want to run a drip, anyway. You might as well be here as anywhere.”

“Gimme an hour, Doc. I’ll be good to go.” 

“Alright, Shepard. I’ll watch your back. The hand on her good shoulder squeezed and Aedan tried really hard not to lean into it. The faint look of worry on Chakwas’ face as she let her eyes close told her she hadn’t quite managed it.

Kasumi had taken over the whole starboard lounge and so had to be expecting the occasional visitor. She didn’t say a word when Aedan trudged in a couple of hours after the away team had returned and smacked the shutter closed before padding over to the bar, artificial light gleaming into her eyes off the slimy goo the doctor had smeared across her cheekbones, earlier. Chakwas had ducked out to discuss pain management with Solus as soon as Aedan had woken up and she’d taken the opportunity to try her own version. 

The choices didn’t look particularly promising. “What the...this one’s red. This one’s pink.” Aedan scowled at the bar setup. “Remind me to have Gardner pick up some decent liquor next time we dock.”

“Making a note, Commander.” EDI's voice chimed in. Yup. Always listening. 

Kasumi at her back kept Aedan’s shoulders from hunching up to her ears. But she shook them out before she turned back to the thief, something sunset colored in her hand. 

“So..that...disappearing thing you do? Cerberus has given me some cloaking tech but nothing as solid as what you’ve got, though I'd worry about that shimmer.” 

The only indication Goto was startled to be spoken to, came in the pause before she replied. “Yes, it’s not quite as smooth as it could be. Do you have a suggestion?”

“Might. If you’re willing to let me look at the schematics.” 

“I might be willing. Kaji and I worked it out together. It can’t go farther than you or me, though.” 

Aedan turned a flinch into a shoulder twitch. “Well. Might not want me looking at it, then. I’ve got no idea what Cerberus is seeing.” Aedan flicked her fingers to her eyes, the gleam of circuitry in the sclera faintly catching the light.

“Oh.” Goto paused again. “Well, then. Let me think about it.” 

“Sure.” Aedan shrugged. “Just might come in handy. I don’t know how much sniper work this is going to take. I get the feeling I’m going to be in much more CQC, day to day. I’d like the advantage.” 

“That makes sense. I’m surprised the Alliance hasn’t come up with anything like it.” 

Aedan shrugged again. “Not really a call for it. When I did scout work, it would have been nice, but anything too weird or unlike armor and it’d look like I was spying. Not really a marine sort of thing. But maybe that’s changed, more recently.” 

“And when you were a thief?” 

The question was offhand but something in Goto’s stillness made her cautious. She really had no idea who to trust here. Just because Kasumi didn’t wear the uniform didn’t make her clean. “Uh. mostly relied on being little and quick and willing to shoot my way out if I had to. Nothing like the skills or tech you’ve got. I never got much past a snatch and grab.”

“You’ve got good hands. Decent timing. Part of a crew, you’d do well, I think. I’m looking forward to seeing it first hand.” 

“We gotta pick up a few more folks before we drop in on your guy.” She rolled a mouthful of the fruity drink over her tongue and grimaced. “Jack wants to be pirates. You thinking the same lines or?”

“I can think of worse ways to spend the next year or so.”

“Yeah. Well. We got a job, first.”

“I suppose.” The thief caught her scanning the shelves behind her and Aedan flinched when she asked, “Are you a collector? A book collector, I mean.” Her painted mouth was smiling in the shadows of her hood. It made Aedan twitch, not being able to get more than a glimpse here or there of the whole of Goto’s face. Hard to assess, that way. It was deliberate, a hood had always been part of the Reds’ outfit, too. 

“No. Just saw a favorite of ,,,someone I used to know. Promised I'd read it. Never got around to it.”

Kasumi stood up and pulled the book carefully from its place and offered it. “By all means...take it. It’s a classic.” 

Aedan’s hand wrapped around the cool leather spine, ridges hard against the base of her fingers, and she pushed back another shiver. “Um. I should go. I promised the Doc I'd check in again, before going back to work.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Thanks.”

Her gaze was hidden by the hood. “Sure, Shep. Stop by any time.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dossier: Archangel. Shepard finds an old friend and isn't entirely happy about it. At least she got a nap in.

Sleep- however fleeting- had helped. Chakwas had hit her with an adjusted dose and she’d managed another two hours in the medbay. When she rolled out, Massani was glaring at Gardner over the countertop. “Hey! Gear up. We’re gonna go pick up the other merc in a half an hour.” Gardner pushed a plate of pancakes at her and she scowled at them for a moment. 

“You think they’re gonna bite, kid?” Massani was frowning at her. 

“No.” Something taunting in his voice made her defensive. She dropped a couple strips of bacon in one of the cakes and rolled it up to eat on her way back up to the cabin to grab her gear. 

Lawson jerked to a stop in front of the elevator, just before they collided. She wrinkled her nose at the syrup on Aedan’s fingers. “Ugh. We have forks, Shepard.”

“Yeah? Plates, too?” She stuffed the last of the roll up into her mouth and pointedly sucked the syrup off her thumb, making a slurping sound as she finished. Behind Lawson, one of the crew members had stopped to stare as they stumbled out of crew quarters but shuffled off at Aedan’s glare over her shoulder. “I’m on my way to pick up another team member, thought you’d want me to hurry.”

“Solus was my main interest, here on Omega. With him on board, the mission can continue, unless Dr. Chakwas needs his help to baby you a little more.”

“Probably should have paid more attention to the details of your mad science project, then, Lawson. Making the duct system so efficient apparently fucks with meds, too.” She caught a flicker of something like concern in the lovely grey blue eyes and bared her teeth in a grin as the elevator doors slid shut between them.

She’d had EDI ping Jack and, on a whim, called Kasumi to the shuttle bay, as well. It was as close to well balanced as this particular crew was going to get her, all specialists and no solid marines. 

At least her pulse wasn’t thudding through her skull any louder than the engines of the shuttle the batarian contact was zipping through the back lanes of Omega. Some of this part of the station looked familiar, though emptier than Aedan recalled. A series of repairs to the outer hull flashed by as they flew over. Must have had a breach in the last few years.

The batarian dropped them off, pointing them to the huddle of freelancers and gang members in various armors currently listening to a sitrep from another Blue Suns rep. As they walked through the base towards the forward position, EDI filled them in on what she knew. 

“The most efficient route will be to proceed with the assault, Commander. There does not seem to be another option.”

“Well, it was worth a shot.”

“This is a goddamn stupid idea, Shepard.” Massani growled in her ear.

She shrugged, “Yeah, I think so, too. Our best bet is Archangel will notice we aren’t shooting him before the gangs realizes and he can give us some cover.” She glanced at Goto. “You up to this?”

“Well, dodge the bullets isn’t my _favorite_ game but I’ll do my best.”

“I’m good, too, by the way.” Jack muttered. 

Aedan cut her a side grin. “This is a crazy plan, I figured you’d just have fun with it. Destroy everything in front of you, leave the one guy alone.”

Jack sniffed, “Fine, if you put it that way.” 

"Atta girl."

They hopped a wall and headed towards the interior of the camp. The gangs had clearly appropriated this whole section of the station; apartments turned into barracks and impromptu meeting rooms. No signs of civilians. Seemed weird that Aria would let an entire armed camp spring up in the middle of her station, just to take out one guy. 

Seemed like a dangerous sort of knife to keep at your back. 

If the gangs, notoriously at each other's throats over territory learned to work together...seemed like that’d be bad for business as usual. “Goto, see what you can hear without being seen?” Aedan jerked her chin towards the huddle near the barrier and Kasumi ducked into the shadow before triggering her cloak.

The rest of them proceeded. A few steps in, Aedan waved her hand to open a door into an ongoing poker game, the table crowded with Eclipse and Blue Suns mercs, one salarian in particularly nice Eclipse tagged armor. Massani ducked back, facing away from the table. Aedan lifted an eyebrow but ignored him, rolling her eyes as the taunts flew. “Just getting our bearings, don’t let us interrupt.”

“Just push over the wall, human. All you are is meat for the grinder while we decide the next move.”

She was tempted to ask how that was going. “One guy...for all this?”

A krogan grunted from a table spread with a broken down shotgun. “He’s cost us enough money to make it worth our while.” 

“Fair enough. We’re just here for the creds.” Aedan slid her hand over the holo to the next room. Massani and Jack followed her into a hall, a few doors splitting off. Only one was locked. Mildly curious, Aedan fiddled with the mechanism for a second and smirked as it popped open. She might be getting her timing back. 

“Damn. That’s gonna be a problem if they send it after us.” 

“Maybe for you, old man.” Jack sneered but Aedan had to agree with the merc. She’d rather not have a heavily armed mech anywhere near her back. But maybe...

“Keep an eye on the door, let’s see what makes this thing tick.”

Jack slid back into the hall and Massani took a position by the window as Aedan stepped up to the console the mech was hooked into. It was familiar tech, just reapplied to something unusually aggressive for basic security, a lot of the safeguards already bypassed. She could disable it or she could...oh, it had always been fun to turn security on its ear. She started tearing into the friend or foe coding.

Kasumi rejoined them as the re-entered the main corridor, sliding Aedan a thin datapad. “They don’t know anything, but this is interesting.” Aedan flicked it open. 

“Yeah, it is. Thought Aria might ought to be worried about her back.” Aedan handed it back, “Hang on to it and I’ll decide what it’s worth, later.”

Kasumi hummed and added, “Something you might want a look at over there, too.” She indicated another side room and as they approached, the sound of machinery and the smell of lubricants and fuel grew, sharp and burning in Aedan’s nose. 

The doors slid open to reveal a hulking gun ship. A newer model of Mantis than anything Aedan had specs for, angular and meant for low running over terrain. There were panels missing, though, and tools spread out around a batarian mechanic in Blue Suns gear who had his head in the guts as sparks flew from whatever he was welding into repair. 

A pack of freelancers were gathered, chattering with the air of nervous first timers as they fiddled awkwardly with their pistols. 

“Anyone in charge, here?” 

“Cathka.” A dark haired man pointed her to the batarian and Aedan slunk past them. 

The batarian glanced up over his shoulder and stood up, laying the welding torch to the side. It whirred, still active on the bench as a shower of sparks danced off the surface. He cleared his faceplate and revealed his dark eyes. “Fresh meat?”

“Sure.” 

He glanced them over. “Well, you all look like you might actually know what you’re doing which is more than I can say for most of the garbage we’re pulling in.” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. “Gotta get this ship back in the air for Tarak and then we’ll be ready to make the next advance.” 

Aedan tipped her head, “What’s the problem?” When Cathka scowled suspiciously, she shrugged, widening her eyes, playing innocent as she swayed closer. “Professional curiosity. My brother is a mechanic, showed me a few tricks for those old Mantis builds.” 

Cathka sniffed but he stepped back and let her get a look into the engine block. She could feel her squad fanning out, almost as if they’d practiced. “Just finished soldering the last of the connections. There’s something interfering with the power draws and the balance is still out of alignment so I’m…” 

He cut off abruptly as his omni flared. Scanning the alert, he barked. “There’s movement in the compound, looks like Archangel’s gonna try an assault. You lot get to the forward barrier!” He sent the freelancers off. “Here, you know what you’re doing? You can help me get her closed back up.” Cathka swung around back to the ship.

Aedan felt a smile crawl across her lips, as her fingers curled around the hilt of the welder on his work table. 

“You're workin' too hard.” She jammed the welder into the power pack at the base of his spine.

She waited long enough to make sure he dropped and then turned on her heel. Jack was grinning at her and she winked. Kasumi’s head was down. 

A burst of gunfire had her headed forward. “C'mon, let's see if we can pry this guy out of his shell. Over the barrier, wait until we’re within a few meters of the base before we turn.” She waited for the others to acknowledge and then strode out of the side room to the forward base. 

Shepard paused at the barrier, eyeing Archangel’s setup. At some point, this had been someone’s high dollar condo...almost a compound, the granite clad exterior had held up reasonably well to the pounding it had been taking from various assaults. Wide windows with worn, barely functioning bullet proof glass- shattered in a few locations- from an angle that looked like it might have been the gunship. The sight line across the bridge was gorgeous. Perfect for a sniper. Not bad at all for a desperate last stand but way too much territory for one person to cover.

It was impressive as hell this merc had lasted hours, much less two days. Maybe he was worth the effort after all.

They'd made it over the barricade just behind the advance of freelancers, taking small shots carefully aimed to not draw suspicion when the sniper aimed one that smacked hard into her shields, draining them flat. She threw herself to the side, head whipping up just in time to catch the reflection of the scope and the topcrest of the helmet.

“Turian sniper, one o’clock.” She snapped out. The next shot took out the freelancer who’d slid in behind her squad.

She clocked the salerian in front of her in the back of the head with the butt of her pistol and shot him at the base of the spine before those overboosted shields could come back on line. “Move! Into the base.” Kasumi flickered out and in from behind the half wall, turning to give them covering fire. Her patterns weren’t particularly clean with the assault rifle but good enough. More practice, Aedan noted, and she’d be solid.

Jack and Massani hauled ass as Aedan turned to reinforce cover and they managed to make it into the bottom floor of the sniper’s condo before the next squad jumped the piled up crates Archangel was using as a choke point. She spun on her heel and clocked the two mercs who had made it inside. No shields.

She dropped them and smirked. And waited, her hand out to her squad to hold them in cover. 

If she’d have been their guy, she’d have dropped a grenade or two. Smoke them out. 

But it was quiet. She flicked Kasumi forward to the bookshelf by the stair, noticing the thief palm something into the bag she had strapped to her side. Later. She advanced up the stairs and wiggled her fingers to Massani and Jack. 

A krogan was fiddling with the locking mech at the door to the balcony room. Shepard flicked her eyes to Jack who grinned ferally. Ugh. Have to get her some reasonable armor. Having her run around in leather and a face mask was a stupid mistake. 

The biotics whipped out, yanking the krogan away from the door but not down. Massani had excellent reflex, laying fire to drain shields as Aedan lined up her shot, waiting for Kasumi’s sign and...bang. 

She released her breath as the krogan dropped. Massani advanced, draining a clip into the main organs. Jack flicked the corpse down the stairs. 

Aedan went to check the door. The krogan had almost had it. Another couple rotations and...there.

She sent her squad to either side and smacked the lock, hands up and out. “Everyone look friendly.”

The turian swung out from his perch and, seeing her, dropped his head. His hands came up to the helmet, typical faceless turian badass helmet with a couple of nasty grooves from close calls, and opened the seals. 

Aedan blinked. “What. The. Fuck.”

Garrus Vakarian let his mandibles twitch, amused even as exhaustion seeped from every angle of his body, as he slumped on the rolled arm of the sofa. “Shepard. Gotta say I'm glad to see you.” 

“Yeah, well I'm not. What the fuck…” A clattering of power assisted armor came from the direction of the barrier, chatter and the clunk of heavy machinery. _Jesus._ She stalked forward to the perch and ducked as a few stray shots winged their way, the others finding cover in the furniture of the room...looked like security barracks for the condo, bunks and leather couches. 

Garrus handed her his rifle, like he’d just done it a couple of days ago and Aedan’s breath caught in her chest. _Handed_ it to her. Like it was no big deal. Like...she was just Shepard and not some undead wretch hauled from the grave, covered in glowing scars with a head full of static. 

She had to blink her vision clear before she could look down the scope. 

The salarian that popped her head up was too tempting. Aedan squeezed the trigger. 

She side-eyed Garrus and his dry huff of a laugh. “Welcome back, Shepard.”

“Yeah.” She handed the rifle back and pointed out her squad. “Massani, Goto, Jack. Garrus Vakarian. Best sniper I ever met who wasn’t me.” She managed another smile as Garrus mimicked her last three words. Jack rolled her eyes but Kasumi waved and Massani grunted as they took up positions.

“How'd you know I was...here?”

“Didn't.” Well, _I_ didn’t. “We were just looking for a merc for hire. So...Archangel?”

He tipped his head, acknowledging the melodrama. “Yeah...I didn't pick it, it just...stuck. Humans.”

“Right.” Aedan fiddled with the slide of her pistol, “Look...we were here to pick up a gun hand but...Garrus, you _can't_. I can’t bring you into this. It’s...” she broke off as gunfire clattered from below.

“Let's get through this and we'll talk it out.” He shouldered his rifle again and scanned through the sights. 

“We’ll get you out of it.” She fired a shot and pegged the engineer trying to launch a drone square between the eyes. “And then we’ll get you the next shuttle to Palavan.” _Where you should have been in the first place_. She should’ve realized something was fishy when that Bailey on the desk in Zakera Ward couldn’t tell her anything about a Vakarian on staff. God, he looked _exhausted_. His whole posture was off, the armor was dinged and cruddy. Only the rifle was in good shape. 

A whirr and clang of heavy machinery drowned out the noise of the returning gunfire. Garrus mumbled to himself, “Spirits, another mech.” He started to explain, “They’re vulnerable in the…” as he wearily pulled his rifle back up to his shoulder and Aedan dropped a hand on his arm, cutting him off. 

“Nah, I got this one already.” They watched it spin on its center axis and start firing on the Eclipse mercs coming over the wall, scattering them into cover. She couldn’t help the sideways smirk she sent him and his mandibles flared again in tired amusement. 

“It really is you, isn’t it?”

Aedan twitched her shoulder. “I don’t know. Seems to be.”

“Shepard…”

She waved him off. “Later. Let’s shoot bad guys.”

It really _was_ an excellent position. It was almost...almost _fun_. Jack could run her skipping trick down the bridge and the flying bodies made easy pickings for her and Garrus. Massani covered their six while Kasumi popped in and out of harm’s way, pocketing this and that. 

This...wasn’t a bad foursquare squad.

But no fucking way. Jacob hadn’t been able to source where the intel on the dossiers had come from, an alias for a member of another cell that he hadn’t been able to track down. Or so he said. She had no way of knowing if they’d known about Garrus. She'd had no say over Joker and Chakwas. Tali, thank Christ, had other ties and hadn’t even hinted at wanting to tag along with Cerberus, smart girl that she was. Or maybe she hadn’t believed…

Aedan breathed out hard and took another shot. Garrus had glanced over the unmodded rifle she’d brought with a wince but it was gonna have to do until the upgrades she’d ordered in the market were calibrated on the Normandy. Fortunately, these salarians depended way more on their boosted shields than the armor they wore underneath. Even power assisted they were too light boned for the heavy stuff. 

The engineer trying to sabotage the helpful mech went down. And the mech finally fritzed out...helpfully exploding and taking out the last two Eclipse. 

They had some breathing room and the squad gathered in the shelter of the couches, placed strategically in between the cover of concrete pillars. 

“We could try to run for it?” Kasumi asked. “Surely there’s a backdoor?”

Aedan lifted an eyebrow at Garrus. “Yes. But I barricaded it yesterday, haven’t been able to…”

A distant rumble shook the floor of the compound and Aedan grabbed Garrus’ arm to keep him upright.

An alert popped up on his omni, “They’ve blown up my barricades. Looks like they realized you’re here to back me up, they must be trying to hit both sides, overwhelm us. There were airlocks installed, didn’t have time to trigger them before I came up.” 

“We shut those down, the roof’s the only way out?” Massani grumbled.

“Yeah. I wasn’t ...really expecting to get out.”

She pushed aside the defeated tone in his baffled subvocals to address the issue. “Well, I _was_ , so… Joker?” She gave Garrus a nod when he mouthed the name.

“Yeah, Commander?” She twitched a half smile at the turian’s wide eyes.

“Start figuring out a way to get a shuttle to our location, should be a roof exit on these coordinates. Even if we have to rappel…” Noise filtered up from the stairs. Blue Suns, Eclipse...this’d be Blood Pack, more their style to assault from behind, try for closer quarters, especially if the crew was mostly vorcha fodder.

“Jack..stay here and back Garrus. Massani, Kasumi...you’re with me, we can clear out the pack and get those doors locked down.”

Garrus glanced at the biotic and Jack, charmer that she was, flipped him off. “Shepard, I don’t need…” 

“Not an option, not leaving you without some relief.” She leaned in, “Garrus. Trust me, she’s got that seriously useful scatter shot thing. And she isn’t a bad shot, herself.” 

“Shockwave,” Jack muttered. 

“Yeah s’what I said. It’ll be okay.” she reassured him.

He waved his hand, “Alright. Go.”

Garrus could keep an eye on Jack and Kasumi and Massani were better for close quarter jobs. If they got the chance, they could even try to mirror, cloak and step and keep attention off of each other. She’d tried that before, an advance and cover sortie but with the cloaks it might actually _work_. Jack lacked the patience, the steadiness for that sort of thing.

“Jesus, EDI how many vorcha are _on_ this station?” Aedan huffed five minutes later, between the waves. One more of the pyros and she was going to be scrapping another set of armor. 

And possibly skin. Chakwas might just let her suffer, if she came in cooked another time.

“Population fluctuates too rapidly to keep accurate tracking. By Aria’s count as of this morning twelve thousand three hundred and sixty one.” There was a pause. “You have reduced that number by forty six, today.” 

“Oh, good.” She took another shot. “Forty seven.”

Panting breath came over the comms, “Shepard, these assholes aren’t slowing down, you done?”

“Almost. Have one more barrier to shut.” 

The cloak really needed some improvements. Kasumi’s clearly worked better. There was something glitchy in the tech but it lasted long enough to let Aedan cut from point to point and seal up the breached barrier doors while Massani dealt with the charging krogan, shotgun to shotgun.

Garrus came in over comms as they were hauling ass back to the stairs. “Need some help here, Shepard.”

“On our way. Krogan between us.” The one on the door turned, fast for his size. She took a shotgun blast to the shields as Massani lined up his shot. Kasumi ghosted around them to check out the device the krogan had been trying to crack Garrus’ doorlock with, draining his shields as he rumbled past her. She detached the gadget before she pocketed it and Aedan made a note to remind her to share as she braced for the oncoming tank. 

The charge rattled her teeth, sucked the breath from her lungs but she held- much to the krogan’s startled grunt. 

“Surprise, asshole!” She bared her teeth and squeezed off a round into his gut as Massani spun out from cover and put a point blank shot into the top of his spine. She took a minute to clear her vision from seeing double before sprinting towards the door, just as Garrus sprung it open.

They slammed it shut behind them, stopping a second krogan in his tracks. Aedan drained his shields while Massani and Garrus cleared the lower floor when Aedan heard the tell tale whine of a badly balanced gunship start to gear up. The pilot...Tarak, if Aedan recalled, started ranting over his speaker, swearing to take Archangel down. 

Aedan panted, “What the hell did you do to piss these guys off?”

“Long story.” His mandibles fluttered in a grimace. “I thought I got rid of that thing,” 

“I managed to stop ‘em fixing it. Took too long to destroy it though, sorry.”

Garrus was about to wave off her concern when it ducked out of sight. The ship swung around to the starboard windows firing wildly into their room and sending them all diving for cover. Bullets tore into the furniture, sending fluff up into the air and destroying what had looked like a decent set of bunks before the whining engines overworked and it dropped back into darkness between the concrete suspension bridges.

“We might be able to…” 

Whatever they might have been able to do got cut off as the gunship swooped back up directly in front of them, an arc of accelerated ammo tearing through the wall. Aedan dove for the floor but a streak of metal zipped across the room, catching Garrus across the middle. And the screech of a heavy round impacting made her snap her head up to see Garrus stagger as bright blue blood spattered across Aedan’s new faceplate. 

“Fuck...get that thing down,” she shouted to the squad. Another pack of gang members had rappelled up the wall behind them and Jack and Kasumi tried to lay covering fire as she and Massani focused on the ship.

The shields had never cycled up. That must have been what the batarian had been trying to fix, there at the end. “Massani!” She slid the grenade launcher she’d been toting across the room to him, ducking a stray shot from the engineer Jack and Kasumi were toying with. 

Aedan heard a guttural groan from behind her, Garrus trying to come back up. She flattened down next to him and laid her arm across his cowl. “Stay down. Lemme get this.” He gurgled and she patted his chest, “Atta boy.” 

She caught Massani’s eye and held up three fingers. Counting off silently. _One two_ , on three he popped up and launched the grenade. As the pilot tried to adjust to target him, Aedan squeezed her round off. Smoke spun off from the tail from Massani’s grenade but she’d only shattered the glass of the cockpit. She dropped again, and pulled Garrus’ rifle up. It was too long for her without the sill to prop it on but she ought to be able to...she swung it up, using her own, newly heavier body to counter balance. 

She took a breath.

The shot rang like a bell in the close room, right through Tarak’s skull. The ship lurched forward but Jack whirled around behind them and, in a wave of blue, that set every hair on Aedan’s body on end, pushed it back towards the barricade just as it exploded.

Aedan dropped back to her knees beside Garrus, yanking a pressure pack out of the first aid kit Kasumi tossed her. 

“Garrus...hey, hey! You hang on. EDI, get me an evac shuttle to this address.”

Lawson’s voice cut in over the comm. “Commander, we’re trying to get clearance to...”

“I don’t give a shit about clearance, I’ll deal with Aria’s bullshit, later. There was a fucking gunship flying in the hall a minute ago. This sort of place has a landing pad on the roof. Get to it or you’re gonna lose me and all three of these _specialists_.”

It was Joker who answered. “Shuttle’s on the way, Commander.”

Aedan chewed the inside of her mouth trying to figure out the connections on his armor, her specs knowledge two years out of date. Jesus...why was this so _complicated_ all of a sudden. Her fingers trembled as she tried to pull up his display, link into the system, get it to... _There._

She broke into the interface, readings popping up with the slightly off tonals of alien tech. His suit was bone dry, not a drop of turian specific meds or medigel, not even hydration, for fuck’s sake. She triggered her omni to fudge a connection from hers to his, hoping against hope it would hold him over. 

It was enough to jarr him back to consciousness. She forced a grin to her face, “Garrus, man. Hey, if I'd known it was you I’d have come here, first, instead of shaking my ass down at the club.” 

He only gurgled in response, the shredded mandible dangling limply against his jaw under the pressure bandage. 

“Okay, I know. I got you.” Kasumi was on his other side, and took up his hand, trying to be comforting. It was nice of her. 

Jack, keeping a watch on the bridge where the smouldering remains of the gunship blocked access to the gangs muttered, “Are you fucking this guy or what?”

“What? No? He was on my squad.”

“Oh.” Something shifted in Jack’s face as she scowled out across the view but Aedan didn’t have the itch to puzzle it out.

She repositioned the soaked pad against his jaw, the heat of his blood rising against the pulse in her hands. “Get me another one of these.”

Zaeed counted out the switch with her, muttering.”He was a hell of a shot but he ain't gonna make it.”

“Shut the fuck up and go wave down the shuttle.” She glared at the merc and he lifted his hands up in surrender, pushing himself up and towards the stairs that she hoped led to the roof. Worst case they could blow a hole in the side of the wall, lift him out that way. “Hang on, babe. We’re gonna get you out.” 

Garrus didn’t stir. The alarms on his suit continued to scream. “Joker, get Chakwas dialed in. She’s gonna have a job.” She readjusted the pad. “It’s Garrus.”

“Garrus? From...Our Garrus?” 

“Yeah…” She waved at Kasumi to start shifting furniture away from the path to the windows, Massani helping her with the overturned bunk. 

“Damn...Okay, Commander.” Comms went fuzzy for a minute and then Chakwas’ warm, steady voice came up.

“Mordin is cueing up a turian specific plasma delivery from his clinic, Commander, it’ll be here by the time you arrive. I kept my records on file, so I have Garrus’ typology and the medical information he gave me on the SR1. Hopefully it’s not too out of date. Turians tend to be rather stable, unless they’ve suffered some trauma.”

“His suit was bone dry, Doc. I patched him into my system but...he’s not in great...” An alert started peeping. “Pressure’s dropping.” 

“Yes, EDI has me linked. You’re doing fine. Just keep him still until the shuttle arrives.”

“Okay.” Yeah, she could tell Chakwas was bullshitting, her vowels always clipped. But it was a nice try, anyway. Garrus’ eyes opened wide then fluttered shut. He’d passed out on her. 

Probably for the best.

She heard the whine of the shuttle on approach. “Joker, tell the pilot we’re gonna try to lift him out the window, north side. I don’t think we can get him up to the roof.” To Massani she added, “There should be a stretcher on board, grab it.” 

The shuttle hovered outside in moments and the merc slid onto the broad sill and reached out to the stretcher being pushed towards him. Taylor had come along to assist. “Chakwas sent an IV, Commander,” he shouted across the room.

“Great.” Aedan disconnected her own lines before she and Massani rolled the limp, awkward figure onto his side. “Help her.” she snapped at Jack while Kasumi tried to wrestle the stretcher under Garrus. Built for humans, it was about a third of a meter too short. With a huff, the biotic dropped to her knees and slid it into place. Aedan lifted his shoulders and tried to just be grateful for the strength she hadn’t had two years ago as she strapped him in carefully, stretching the safety lines to the limits, to fit around his carapace. She took the heavier end at his head and started walking backwards as the others lined up at the sides and they heaved him up.

It took some maneuvering to set her end up on the sill, hop over to the shuttle-grabbing Jacob’s stretched out hand- and then carefully leaning out to guide the stretcher in, angling it. She had to admit, the shuttle pilot was steady as fuck. As soon as they had him in, Jacob switched the feed to the bag Chakwas had sent. Aedan bit her lip to stop herself from barking at the Cerberus agent, pushing him aside. Chakwas had sent it. It was fine. And her hand was shaking, again, the rush of blood pounding in her chest. Jacob made the hook up smoothly, the indicators from Garrus’ armor settling down to an less urgent alarm.

The interior was cramped with a full squad and the stretcher and Aedan backed up to the cockpit. She glanced down at the pilot who was ignoring the angry buzz of her comm as the Omega flight and traffic control offices threw a fit about their existence. “Nice handling.”

The pilot cut her eyes briefly away from the headsup. “Thanks, Commander.”

“Name?” Someone had told her before, but...

“Lefske, ma’am.” 

Aedan dropped a light fist on the shoulder closest to her. “Lefske. Thanks.” 

“I’ll get us back.”

She settled down on her heels, eyes on the bay. Kasumi had taken her place with a new pressure pad as Jacob held the IV, sitting on the bench to the left.. Jack was huddled in a corner with her eyes lowered, every muscle tensed from the left over adrenaline. Massani was checking over his assault rifle.

 _Okay._ “Uh. Good job. You all handled yourselves well.” She got a couple of grunts from Massani and Jack. 

Kasumi nodded, “Thanks, Shep.”

“Don’t know if you...know how but I want mission reports. Little things you noticed as we advanced, how the enemy reacted to your attack, how your gun worked. That sort of thing.” 

“No way.” Jack almost whined.

“Shower and eat. No rush. But yeah. I gotta know how you all look at things, see what you bring.” Jack flipped her off, not particularly subtly. “Consider it your fucking rent, Jack. Or I could strip it from your paypack.”

Massani rumbled, “You got a format you want?” 

“Not right now. Might formalize it later.” Garrus’ display started pinging as IV drained and Jacob smoothly pulled another out of the crate at his feet and switched them up, ignoring her eyes on every movement. “Kasumi, once you tear apart that thing you took off of the door, I want specs and applications.”

The hood slid back and she tilted her head to the side, letting Aedan see the soft sparkle of her dark eyes. “I can do that.”

Chakwas met them in the cargo bay, a couple security guys and her nurse in tractor beam behind her. The security guys shifted Garrus to a proper gurney under the doctor’s watchful gaze and they were rolling in seconds.

“Doc…”

“I’ve got him, Commander.” Her voice was crisp and clear. And Aedan drew up short. She wasn’t needed but she couldn’t stop herself from trailing behind, hauling herself up the service ladder. Chakwas was in low, urgent conversation as she cleared the deck, with the nurse or maybe with Solus as they rolled Garrus into the medbay. The doors slid shut behind them, before Aedan could walk through.

EDI’s oddly warm voice chimed in, “Dr. Chakwas says she will report to you as soon as she has Garrus stabilized, Commander.”

She stared at the reflection in the shiny metal of the door, blue spatters drying grey across her blank face and then spun to drop down on her heels again, settling against the wall.

The long, white clad legs of Agent Lawson appeared in her view. “I’m sure the doctor will notify you if there’s anything…” There was something almost soft under the accent, something that leaned towards sympathy.

Aedan growled, “I don’t fucking care. I’m not leaving him alone on this ship.” 

She glared up at Miranda, daring her to ask why.

The neatly shaped jawline tightened as the eyes went cold, again.

“You’ll break those perfect teeth if you keep clenching ‘em that way,” she snarled. Miranda whirled away, leaving Aedan to stare at her ass. God, at least they’d given her decent pants instead of ...whatever that thing was Miranda was wearing.

She startled at the steaming mug that appeared from her right, in front of her. Jesus, she had to get out of her head. Aedan flicked her eyes up to the man holding it out.

“Made soup.” Gardner grunted.

She took it. It smelled of garlic and warmth and the heat seeped into her palms. “Thanks.”

“Sure, Commander.” 

Half an hour of crew members avoiding her eyes and scuttling past as she stared out at the wall before Chakwas finally came up over comms. “Commander, he’s stable. I promise, I will let you know if anything changes.”

“Did he wake…” 

“Not yet. He’s exhausted, Shepard, besides the damage. Give him some time.” 

Aedan heard the elevator open and a series of shuffling steps and looked up to see Joker, of all people, standing in front of her.

“What are you doing down here?” It had taken some getting used to, Joker below decks without crutches. 

“I can smell you from the bridge, Commander. Go clean up. I’ll watch.”

“Joker…”

His voice was gruff but gentle. “If he wakes up or anyone tries to go in that isn’t Chakwas, I’ll call you, okay?” Joker crossed his arms and gave her a skeptical eyebrow. “You don’t worry about leaving me alone on the Cerberus ship but you’re worried about the giant alien covered in metallic skin who was born with a gun in his hand in full armor?”

“You picked this, Moreau.” 

Her growl didn’t faze him and he shrugged. “Yeah, I did. Uh, I’d help you up but I’m pretty sure it would go badly for both of us.”

She stared at him, his own version of resolute plain on his face, and forced a breath out through her nose. Pushed herself up, trying not to grimace as her joints popped. _Hadn’t fixed that shit, had they?_ “Who’s flying the ship?”

“We’re still docked at Omega since you never said different. I’ll eat while I’m down here, two birds and all, and be ready to fly when you’ve cleaned up.” He waved his hand in front of his face, pointedly. “Jeez, you’ve still got…”

She lifted a hand to stop him, “Yeah, okay, I’m going.”

She left the lights off in the cabin. Just the glow of the stupid tank lit the room, and it helped to keep her eyes from drifting up to the ceiling. But the blinking light on her computer drew her gaze to the desk. To the holoframe placed just so and it’s flickering picture of Kaidan. She turned her back on the sunlight in his eyes and started shucking armor. 

“EDI?”

“Yes, Commander?”

“Has anyone been on this deck since I left?” She managed to grind out the question through her teeth.

“I’m sorry. There is a block on that information, Commander.” 

“Of fucking course there is.” She stalked into the head. 

o-o-o-o-o

The elevator paused on her way down from the loft cabin, the doors opening to reveal Taylor brandishing a data pad. “Got everyone’s mission report ready.”

Aedan stared at him for a tick before she forced an interested look on her face and stepped out of the elevator, letting the doors slide shut. “Even Jack’s?”

Jacob gave her a half smile, “Well, kind of. If you think one obscene drawing of a mech with an attachment I don’t think is standard and a fairly detailed description of what electrocuted batarian smells like counts as a report.” 

Aedan flicked the ‘pad open and had to nod. “Well. She’s got some artistic skills. Guess she designed her own tats.” 

Jacob laughed. The smile faded as Aedan continued scrolling down, “Commander, you know Vakarian’s vitals were pretty bad.”

“Don’t start…” She broke off as the elevator slid open, again.

“Hey, Shepard.”

“Jesus.”

“No...don’t think I am, anyway.”

“You ass. Why are you out of bed?” Jacob saluted and walked away, shaking his head in surprise as Aedan punched Garrus’ unusually unarmored shoulder. She could count the number of times she’d seen him out of gear on one hand, but it made sense that Chakwas had had to crack him free.

“Joker said you were, uh, fretting.” He turned his face so she could see the bandaging. “They wouldn’t show me a mirror. How bad is it?”

“Hell, you know I’ve always thought you were a handsome devil. Slap a little face paint on and we’ll put you up for Citadel’s Most Eligible.”

Garrus chuckled and groaned, “Ugh, okay, no laughing.” He looked her over. “You’re...looking a little different. But...scars are sexy, right?”

“So they told me at the Villa.” She twitched a shoulder. “Cybernetics, but I, uh, guess I woke up before it all healed up.” 

“Chakwas said. They used some of what they learned on your rebuild putting my jaw back together.”

“Good.” She called the elevator back. “Alright. Where do you want to go?”

“I’ll just bunk down in the gunnery, no need to make your crew shift around. I had a look, plenty of space for a bunk.”

Aedan shook her head. “Oh, absolutely not. I want you off this boat, next civilized stop we make.”

“It's not happening. I'm not leaving you here.” His subvocals were dampened by the fact that his mandible was still immobilized, so it almost sounded slurred. But there was no mistaking how serious he was and Aedan dropped her head and covered her face with her hands.

“You can't stay,” she hissed through her fingers before she scowled up at him. This is fucking _Cerberus_ , with the torture and the experiments? There’s a goddamned AI that records quite literally everything we say or do and Solus has already pulled six bugs out of his lab. I’m not even sure why _I’m_ here other than the fact that I honestly don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Yeah, Joker mentioned that the Alliance cut you off.” He folded his arms across his chest, leaning against the wall. “Tell me what the mission is, Shepard.” 

“Ugh. Fine. C’mon.” She swung them around the corner into the conference room and pulled up the Freedom’s Progress footage. EDI scrolled the data from the previous colonies along the side. “It’s...eerie as fuck, Garrus, not gonna lie. But so far it’s all human colonies. There’s no reason for you to be in on this.”

He flicked thoughtfully through the stills of the colony, the Collectors toting their coffinlike pods full of frozen colonists. “It’s Reapers, though. At the heart of it, it’s Reapers?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

He looked up, fixing her in his bright blue gaze. She could see the scroll of data across his visor. “They aren't going to stop with humans, you know they won't.”

“Dammit, we’re probably gonna die trying to do this, you know? These bugs, they can paralyze you with one jab. The colonists are probably slaves. Or worse.” God, can't think about worse. 

“Well, you humans, maybe.” He tried to tease. “Doesn’t look like they even tried to go after that quarian.” More soberly, he added, “I don’t...I can’t go home right now, Shepard. Let me...let me at least back you up. For awhile.” Reaching out, he laid a long fingered hand on her shoulder. “Gotta be honest, you look a little rough. And...you can’t tell me I won’t be a good addition to your squad.”

She couldn’t. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Fine.”

“It’ll be fun, just like old times.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Horizon.

Old times. Sure.

Forcing herself not to hover a moment longer, Aedan left Garrus to settle into his cubby and took herself down to the range she’d set up in the shuttle bay. 

It wasn’t ideal but between the Kodiak and the Hammerhead they’d picked up from a Cerberus facility early on, she had a decently insulated, straight shot to test out the weaponry they were picking up. Scavenging. She wrinkled her nose and squeezed off another round. She’d had the whole crew down here in rotation, so at least she had a vague idea of weaknesses to work on, coming up. “EDI, schedule a rotation for Garrus. I want a better look at him with that rifle. And probably order a set of reinforced targets. With that barrel, it’s gonna put a hole in Normandy’s hull, else.”

“Of course, Shepard.”

The new heat sinks had a...distinct smell, more like the cordite and gunpowder from the old style Earth guns she recalled from her Reds days than the clean feel of the firearms she’d gotten used to in the Alliance. 

Her sniper rifle had been like that. It lingered on her undershirt, her fingers. In her hair. Narrowing her eyes, here between the shuttle and Hammerhead, it felt like an alley. All she needed was some strung up bottle caps to make the place feel fucking home-like. 

She’d gone a few rounds with the new mods she’d picked up, switching back and forth between the incendiary round and the armor pierce she’d preferred before. The lingering burn of the incendiary was gonna come in handy if they ran into more vorcha, might slow down that regen. 

After an hour, she paused to shake out her arms and give her ears a break. She should have had her ear pro on, but it was too easy for someone to sneak up on her. She rotated her hips, bending carefully from the waist and flexing the tightening muscles along her spine. Something was off in her stance; she’d have to have Garrus give her a critical once over with the visor before they went down again. 

She couldn’t lie to herself. It felt...nice...having him aboard. Like...maybe...Aedan turned the thought over in her head. Like a piece on the constantly shifting gameboard might have fallen into place. Anderson had liked to play chess once in a while, run her paces. It felt like she’d picked up her knight after sneaking a pawn across the field. 

Another few minutes had the guns stowed in protective cases to haul all the way back up to the armory, EDI informing her as soon as Jacob had left his post to eat. She was careful to put things away, neatly. 

She waited for the elevator to take her back to the whirl of activity on the Normandy, freezing everytime the ship adjusted under her feet, recalling that she was definitely being watched. 

She ought to go up to the cockpit, thank Joker for indulging her _fretting_.

But her hand twitched across the interface and took her to engineering, instead. She could feel the metal grate of the stairs through her boot soles as she padded down the stairs to the red lit storage bay. 

“What the fuck do you want?” Jack had been sprawled across her cot, but in a whirl was crouched up on her heels and Aedan raised her eyebrows and shrugged. 

“Nothin’. Just checking in. You looked a little rattled down on Omega.”

“You left me alone with a turian after I’d just been fucking frozen and busted out of turian jail and then we almost got our asses exploded by crazy gangs with fucking gunships.” 

_Oh. Well, shit._ “Yeah. I mean, it was more...uh, Hey, try not to tell Garrus about all the murder and uh, space station crashing. He’s not a cop anymore but he does tend to be black and white about that sort of shit, y’know?”

Jack sneered. “Thought I smelled cop.”

“Yeah, well. He’s reformed. Now, he’s a _vigilante_ , so…”

“Unhunh. _That’s_ fucking _great_.” Aedan had to agree with her.

 _Still_. “We need him. Better shot than anyone else on this boat.”

“Even you? Thought you were the shit?” Jack was pacing now, so Aedan locked her knees and tried to be still. 

“Well...I’ve been dead. Still shaking off the rust.”

Jack stared at her and then screwed her mouth into a snarl. “Are...Are you bonding? Is that what this is?” 

“No. Jesus. You told me some crap and I’m returning the gesture. That’s how this shit works.” _If you’re the only one talking it makes it feel like maybe i’m just analyzing you._ Gerte’s soothingly warm voice flickered across her memory and she held back a shiver. _Ghosts_. What would Gerte say to her, looking at her now? Yeah, no. She wasn’t bringing this crap anywhere near Gerte. 

“Oh.” Jack brought her back to the present with a grunt. Aedan just caught another flash of confusion running across her face before she sneered. “ Well, stop, it’s weird.”

“Fine.” Aedan cast around for a second. “Uh. How’s that research going? You need me to set Kasumi on it?” 

“I got some leads. Maybe...I might know where I need to go.” 

“Okay.” She pushed off the wall she’d been leaning against. “Well, hey, lemme know. We’ll have some fun. I’m uh...gonna...get back.”

“Fuck off, then.”

“God, don’t I wish,” she couldn’t help toss back over her shoulder and Jack’s harsh laugh followed her up the stairs. 

“Hey, Commander? The Illusive Man wants to speak with you.”

She stopped dead in the corridor, the soothing rumble of the engines spinning under her feet and drowning the rush of blood through her head at Joker’s sudden intrusion. “Why?”

“Didn’t tell me. I’m just relaying the message.”

Suddenly, she was glad she was still dressed down in her undershirt and tac pants. She did bother to wipe the smear of gun oil off of her forehead in the reflection of the door before she hit the conference room. Standing stock still as the comm relay scanned her, Aedan growled “What do you want?” as soon as The Illusive Man shimmered into view.

He took a drag of his cigarette before sharing his news, “Shepard, we have them.” 

“Who?”

“The Collectors are heading to a human colony on a planet called Horizon. It’s gone silent, like the others did. And you might be interested to know, your old lieutenant, Kaidan Alenko, is stationed there as well.”

She bit her tongue on his name, forcing a hint of disinterest into her voice. “Alenko? Why’s he stuck out in the Terminus? Most of those colonies would rather eat glass than play footsie with the Alliance.”

“I imagine the Alliance put him on a backwater to keep him out of the way of their cover up. I haven’t heard anything else about him, all the records are sealed. If he’s willing to jump ship, he could be another asset.”

That sounded...right. She wanted to distrust anything The Illusive Man told her out of spite but Anderson hadn’t told her _anything_. Just that he was on a mission. And if Joker was right and the Alliance, the Council had buried the Reapers into the Geth invasion.

The Illusive Man slapped the arm of his chair, drawing her attention back. “We’ve got a real chance here, Shepard. Is Professor Solus ready with his research?” 

“I’ll go hurry him up.”

She swung into the lab to find Solus making notes as he watched one of the bugs they’d captured flit back and forth across the reinforced observation case. “Heads up, Solus. Time to prove you got the chops to back up your resume.”

He grinned at her, the lipless smile oddly charming and she lifted her eyebrows. “Yes.”

Spinning up a copy of her armor on the display, he showed her the programmed countermeasure. “Should work on more than one. Needs a field test.” 

Should. Well, that was inspiring. “Well, we’re about to give it one. Hope you’re right.”

Nervous energy buzzed through her veins and Aedan grimaced as she found herself bouncing on her toes outside of the labs. She locked herself in place, again and triggered the comm. “Joker, estimate to Horizon?”

“Half an hour, Commander. “ 

“Take us in quiet, I’m suiting up. EDI, ping Garrus, Jack, and ...Massani. Hopefully we’ll get there first but …”

Miranda appeared in her view as Aedan stalked towards the elevator from the lab and she had to draw up quick not to plow right into her- hands first. ”Jesus, Lawson.”

“I want to go.” 

“No, you don’t.” 

“Shepard, the whole reason for the project to bring you back was to get us to this point! I want to...the Illusive Man included me in this mission and I…”

Aedan cut her off. “I don’t care. It’s my mission and you’re staying here. More than one biotic and I have to start calculating cross angles and gravity into my shots. Plus...face it, Lawson. Jack’s a heavyweight.” 

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, you might be technically perfect but Jack is efficient. And she doesn’t hesitate. You have to calculate to get the best result out of your strength and while that’s great on a practice field or in close quarters? On an open field, it slows you down. This isn’t gonna be a place for finesse. Stay up here and deal with the data flow. And if it looks like the ship is in danger, get it the fuck away.”

“The _ship_ isn’t the mission focus.”

“It’s mine, though.” Jacob ducked into view, looking as though he wanted to argue for ground team, as well. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Aedan ran her hands through her hair and sighed. “You’re back up, both of you. Don’t you get it? If this goes south, you can follow the damned Collectors and figure out where they’re headed. You can form another crew. But you need the Normandy and Mordin to do it. Mordin can figure out another way to stop the bugs and you can try again with better information.”

“The Illusive Man didn’t spend billions of credits on you because you were expendable, Shepard.” Miranda’s tone was almost soft. 

Aedan nodded. “Maybe not. But I am. If they get the better of me down there, you’ll still have more information to keep the fight going. You need this ship and I need you both aboard, with no attachments to the squad I take down there to do it.” 

Jacob’s posture, always parade ground perfect, squared even further as he saluted. Aedan winced internally but returned it and saw Miranda watching her. “What?”

“That’s a good plan. But I spent two years of my life putting you back together, Shepard. I’d rather not do it, again.”

“I’ll try not to waste your effort, Lawson.” _And if I ever wake up on a table in your lab, again, the first bullet is gonna be yours._

She triggered the comms again as the elevator took her to the Loft. “Goto.”

“Yes, Shepard?”

“Kasumi, get down to engineering. They may need some extra hands down there if we’ve got to run for it. You’ve got the fastest hands on the ship.”

“Aw, Shep. You say the nicest things.” 

“Goto…” Aedan swallowed back a smile, though as she triggered the door open and trotted towards the armor locker, flashing with the notification of the professor’s updated shield system.

“On my way, Commander, ma’am.” 

She was strapping down her gauntlet in the elevator on the way back down to the shuttle bay when Joker came in over the elevator’s speaker. 

“Commander…” 

Crap, he sounded worried. “Yeah, Joker?” 

“We didn’t beat ‘em here.” 

Fuck. _Kaidan._ She forced the panic away. “Okay. They see us?” 

“You think I’m stupid? We’re on the other side of the planet.” 

EDI piped in, “There is less than a fifteen percent chance of them observing us in our geosynchronous orbit, Shepard. However, the communication array of the colony is still down and we are unable to make scans for life signs through whatever method of blockade they are using. The shuttle should be small enough to avoid immediate detection. You can place a signal booster to maintain communications for a time.”

Jack and Garrus were already in the bay going over the weaponry that Jacob had brought down for them. Massani walked over from the ladder that he’d climbed up from his cargo hold as she was checking Jack’s new armor out. 

“It’s heavy as fuck.” The biotic growled as she adjusted the seal over her boot.

“You’ve said. But I don’t care what you run around in on the ship or on shore leave, you don’t come into combat in straps anymore, you got me?” Aedan straightened the set of the asari made chestpiece across her shoulders. “It’s made for commandos, it isn’t gonna slow you down, okay? Worked great in practice.”

“Keeps us from having to use up all the medigel on your cute arse, too.” Massani muttered. 

“Not me who sounds like a broken down freighter on runs, asshole.” 

Garrus sent her a skeptical eye. Yeah, it wasn’t exactly the cleanest squad she’d ever run but they all shot straight and none of them needed hand holding. “Alright kids, let’s play nice. There are actual people down there we need to help.” And Kaidan. Kaidan who could be... _nope._

She hopped into the belly of the shuttle. Lefske was back in the pilot’s seat as she boarded and Aedan gave her a nod. “Fly low, yeah?” 

“Ma’am.”

The colony was still except for a whisper of wind through a patch of trees that hid their approach and landing. Aedan glanced down at the pilot as she adjusted for the breeze. “You book as soon as you drop the signal booster and we clear the treeline. I’ll holler if we need evac.”

“That’s not standard Cerberus procedure, Commander.” Lefske’s good humoured face blanked at the look Aedan shot her and she quietly murmured, “Yes, ma’am.” She stayed silent as she maneuvered the shuttle to a decent height for deployment.

 _Fuck, this wasn’t the pilot’s fault._ Aedan dropped her armored fist on the shoulder closest and took a few steps to the edge to get a clear sight line before she dropped out of the shuttle next to Garrus. “Quiet. Make for the trees.”

There was a shoulder height wall that curved into the outer edge of the colony, Aedan forced herself to be steady and methodical in the advance. Her heartbeat stayed in her chest at least, though she kept needing to push aside the idea of Kaidan being down there- somewhere. _Maybe he wasn't, maybe Cerberus’ intel was bad and he’d left already. Maybe…_ She bit the inside of her cheek hard and refocused.

EDI fed them data as they advanced, Mordin breaking in to explain how the seeker shield should work, hiding the human signatures. 

A swarm hoved into view and buzzed overhead for a minute. “Well, they might know we’re here, anyway.”

“Depends. Can fine tune later if less effective than hoped.”

“Yeah, try and pick up our corpses first though, OK?” Jack muttered, setting off Garrus and Massani in discordant chuckles.

“No corpses left behind.” Mordin assured them.

Garrus’ hearing picked up the whirr of wings, first. “Twelve o’clock, Shepard, that staging area.”

He’d remembered the human style orientation and she smiled to herself as she ordered, “Find cover, try and keep the high ground.”

The first Collectors flew into sight, like humanoid, two meter tall cockroaches. “Ugh. God, I thought waterbugs were bad.”

The first firefight was a matter of feeling out a new enemy. Once upon a time, Aedan had relished this sort of fight, the main focus of her career as an infiltrator. Scope out new territory, hunt for the weaknesses of an unknown situation. It was familiar. 

The added weight of the colonists and Kaidan sucked any enjoyment out of what used to be muscle memory.

Collectors did not care for headshots, at the very least. A weakness in their armor between the sets of eyes. Maybe they counted on their freaky appearance to scare off snipers. Personally, she was glad to have the distance. She hadn’t dealt with bugs much since leaving Earth.

The Collectors threw up energy based shielding almost like Geth. It sucked fire power and wasted sinks, but some experimentation proved useful. “That incendiary round works, hunh?” Garrus called out as she cleared the habitation pod while they scoured the field for discarded sinks to replenish the ones they’d burned out.

“Seems to.“ She gritted her teeth and cracked the small safe in the living area. The odds of the inhabitants coming back for the two chits she found were slim. Pocketing them, she turned her back on a pair of flickering holoframes on the window ledge.

The colony was eerily empty, the wind howling through open windows, open doors; like Freedom’s Progress. ‘Pads left open on the couches and desks; coffee cups gone cold, a few plates of food indicated it had been dinner time. She wondered if Kaidan had one of these little apartment huts or if he’d been in a barracks situation. _Had he been in the Mess when the swarms blew through? Had he…_

Just before the next clearing, they came across a dead Collector. She frowned at the reading on her omni and sent it on. “EDI, what am I lookin’ at?” Fucking thing looked like it had been turned inside out on itself.

It took a moment for the AI to reply. “There is a biotic signature on the corpse, Shepard. Other than that, I am not certain. I have not come across this sort of damage before.”

She set her omni to scan, pulling as many details as she could to send to the lab. It galled her to let Cerberus have it but there wasn’t an alternative. _Biotic._ Her heart fluttered. Kaidan hadn’t been able to do that sort of damage, though. Not two years ago. 

She’d have sworn she’d seen all his tricks. 

Maybe there’d been another biotic on scene. A colonist. Or an asari, maybe. God, that was...she’d never seen anything _like_ that sort of damage from…

“Commander…” Garrus prompted and she shut the scan down. 

“Yeah. Let’s move out.”

There was a low buzz in the air, the swarms still darting around them and distant wings, even when they weren’t running into the shielded Collectors. Massani picked up one of their rifles after one of the more lethal bugs had dropped it after Jack’s shockwave.

And then...one hovered in the air, shattering and reforming around a glowing...presence. It was too shielded, even for Garrus’ high powered rifle. Even for the Collector ray gun. And it spoke, the multilayered sound of a Reaper through its...mandibles...sending a chill down her spine. 

“What the fuck do you want with all these people?” she shouted. They knew who she was, for god’s sake. She let the headshot clear the pounding refrain... _was it because they had him was it..._

“They are the harvest.”

_That’s not creepy at all._

“You will feel this.”

 _That, too._ But it wasn’t fucking wrong. _Jesus, those laser guns stung._

“Shepard, can we quit interrogating these assholes and just kill them?”

“We need information as much as we need to find the central staging area.” There was a concentrated effort by the bugs around a central square area. Massani took up a stance by a playset, in a grassy area next to a shed up on a platform and Jack turned out, setting up across the field in a nice synchronicity that she’d have to point out later, in debrief. 

Aedan frowned as Garrus pointed out the lighted display on the shed door and she nodded. Yeah. That was _strange._

Another one of the chatty, glowing bugs flew in at the front of a squad and she had to take her concentration elsewhere.

Ten minutes later, the last of the drones cleared out and the hololock on the shed was a dead giveaway. No one had time to lock anything else. This had to be a survivor. She pressed down any expectation; Kaidan...the Kaidan she knew, would have been too smart to give himself away like that. So. Civilian.

She still had to swallow back disappointment when the maintenance guy clattered out of his hiding place. “That Alliance asshole, Alenko. This is _his_ fault, if he hadn’t brought those guns online, they’d have…” 

Her arm shot out before she could stop herself, pinning the man to the wall with a grunt as Garrus murmured her name in warning over the comm link. “You’ve met Alenko?”

“Yeah. What the hell is wrong with you?!” Her hand tightened in the front of his coveralls and he squawked to silence.

“When did you see him last?” She could feel the eyes on her back. Jack snickered as she rummaged through the fridge for a quick snack, tossing Massani a bottle of water when he stuck his hand out.

“I dunno, a few minutes before...he was trying to get the transmission tower back online. I…”

“Where?” She let him go with a final shake and the man babbled an answer as he slid down the wall.

Maybe...maybe he was still trying to get them online? That would be like him. He’d need back up, though. 

“Kaidan’s here?” Garrus asked, his tone low and subdued as he came up to stand beside her. 

“Yeah, Illusive Man said there was some information that he’d been transferred here to set up the guns.”

“Why didn’t you...oh.” Garrus never had been slow. He hesitantly dropped a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find him. Knowing him, he’s trying to figure out a fix for that comm relay.”

“Yeah.”

Past the shed, communications dropped off with the Normandy, whatever field the Collectors were using too strong even for the booster they’d set up. They slowed their advance.

They followed the maintenance man’s directions to the transmitter, in a clearing just past the main buildings of the colony. It was empty, except for a few pallets, some cast off boxes. She cleared her expression as Massani pulled up to her shoulder. She flicked her hand in a circle. “Clear the buildings, I’m gonna look at that tower.” 

Garrus shot her a look. “He should be here. All this tech?”

 _He should be_. “Yeah. Clear the field, set up in that pod over there. Maybe he’s...just...hurry.”

Aedan yanked open the panel and started wiring in the smaller booster that would burn through the signal block. It wasn’t hard, just took some finesse that even her finely jointed gauntlets slowed down. She frowned down at a few loose connections and tightened them. Almost like someone had pulled them free in a hurry. “EDI, can you hear me now?”

“Yes, Commander.” 

“What can you tell me about those guns?” 

The scan took barely a second. “It should be a simple repair but it will take some time.”

“Fine.” She watched Garrus wave an all clear from the largest hab building and lifted her hand in reply.

“Commander, there are several life signs converging on your location, I suggest you take cover.”

She called out to the others over comms. “Heads up, we’ve got company.”

More of the husks. Definitely a little different than what they’d come across on Eden Prime, more calculated in their advance. Not quite mindless. Still stank when they exploded, though, even through filters. 

Another type...she didn’t think it was a Collector. It had the metallic glow of a husk, but bigger and armed with a nasty rolling attack, not unlike Jack’s shockwave. “Are these things giving off a biotic field?” She asked when Jack paused beside her for cover, letting her amp cool down.

Jack shook her head. “Nah. Doesn’t feel like it. Sure as fuck works like one, though. My ears are ringing.” Another of the glowing assholes lit up a drone. “That fucker does, though.” 

“Wonderful.”

Harbinger. It was one of those words...she just hadn’t come across it. Like an omen, maybe. It just sounded...bad. She’d have to look it up, see if there was some sort of message in the names these things chose.

“Guns are online, Shepard.” EDI- finally- whispered in her ear.

“Fire at will.” She heard the GARDIAN system starting to spin up, the smooth mechanisms a soothing, familiar backdrop as they rolled into place under the AI’s guidance.

“Shepard! What the _hell_ is that?“ 

She whipped her head around to where Jack was pointing. It hovered in the air but she couldn’t see wings just...a gaping maw of badness filled with husks...no. Not quite husks. Some looked still more human than not. But not enough to save. She forced herself to stop looking at the faces and lined up her sights.

“I don’t know. Get it down.”

The thing’s shield absorbed her first shot. Not even a flicker in the weird purple energy. Ducking down, she triggered her omni to take as many readings as she could manage of the results. 

It took way too long, but the barrier came down and Garrus and Massani poured in on assault. And then the thing fell out of its ungainly hover, dropping to the ground with a whump. She paused, holding her hand up as she read her scans. That was way too….

The wave of discharge energy stripped her shields. Massani careened to the side as a glancing blow burned through his hard suit. 

“Cover him!” He didn’t move and Aedan growled as she refocused on tearing the barrier down. Again. 

It was focused on her and Aedan was damned if she’d let it slack off but... Jack shrieked to her left and she could see the biotic’s armor readings starting to edge into red territory as a bolt of energy burned past them, way too close. The residual whip of a biotic flare cracked past her, setting her teeth on edge. She needed to get farther away.

“Garrus, draw its fire. I’m gonna pop round”

“Three, two, one.” She triggered her cloak and hauled across the field to a service truck abandoned nearby, pausing to set a couple of charges. She flipped herself over the side as Garrus’ fire petered out. Another second and she was set up. Her sniper rifle cracked the air.

It hauled around, slow and bulky and found her. _Come get it._

As it hovered over the mark, she set off the charges. It lit up. But it didn’t slow down, 

shaking off the attack, the monster moved towards her again, ignoring as Garrus and Jack poured fire on. 

She rolled to miss the beam slicing through the truck bed and then had to immediately tuck and drop the other way as another beam tore in from the other side. And then it dropped. “Cover!”

Jack screamed again as the wave caught her. Aedan shook the blood out of her ears and took aim.

Through the corner of her eye, she saw Massani’s arm dragging Jack behind some crates. _Thank fuck_. The crack of one of Garrus’ modified shells sounded against the monster's armor. It was close enough… it looked like...husks glommed together. She hesitated. She’d overloaded husks before, something about the circuitry...She cycled up the omni.

_There._

The circuit clicked in and made a slurping zap sound as it tore through the thing’s...nerves? Conduits? Garrus piled on fire as she hauled across the field in cloak again, repositioning behind a hastily erected barrier. Looked like some of the colonists had tried to defend against the swarming critters.

Judging by the lack of bodies, it hadn’t worked. 

It discharged again. “Garrus can you…?”

“Yeah, I've got it dialed in now. We on our own?”

“No. Fuck, that shit hurts.” Massani wheezed. “Jack’s stable but down.”

“You got any gre…” A grenade flung over the pallet he’d dragged them behind. 

“On the five count”

Her helmet didn’t quite mute the concussion from the explosion and her ears rang as she triggered the circuit closed again. Garrus’ overload wasn’t quite as focused as hers, but it ripped into the thing just as Massani fired off a modified round. This time the monster dropped and they dove for cover again.

Nothing but quiet. The panting of her squad broke through the haze of thoughts.

She stuck her head up to catch as it disintegrated, with a fizzle of electricity. “Damn it...EDI did you get any readings off of that thing?” She yanked her helmet off, shaking the last buzz of the blast out of her ears and dropping it to the side.

“I have sent the data to Mordin, Shepard.”

Aedan knelt down by Jack and pulled up her armor readings with a grimace, supplementing the medigel sealing off the burns to her torso, the one across her skull. Needed to get her to Chakwas. Big brown eyes fluttered open and Aedan raised her hands, trying to fend off the panicked attack she felt weakly building. “You’re okay...give the medigel some time, okay? Gonna get you out of here…” She broke off as a howl of engines indicated the Collector ship rose away from its perch. “It’s running!”

Her heart stopped as she watched the ship lift, the incessant sound of the rush of blood felt like it was pooling in her boots along with sweat from her overloaded cooling system, instead. _Oh god. No. nono_

Another howl- human this time- from her left had her up on her feet, gun out but it was just the maintenance guy. “Nooo! No, you’re letting them...They’ve got Lilith and Sten and…”

She holstered the pistol and started to kneel down with Jack, again. “I’m sorry…”

“You’re _sorry_? They’ve got half the colony with them!”

“You need to calm down. We’ve done what we could.” Aedan could hear Garrus slide into cop voice and it almost triggered a hysterical laugh as she made sure Jack’s system had applied the right set of meds. She pinged Joker, "Joker, you need to track them."

"We following?"

She hesitated. "No. Just track." She'd brought Jack into this. The colonists and Kaidan were...collateral...oh, God. What the hell was wrong with her? The mechanic was still screaming and she opened comms to Joker, again. "Joker,"

“Calm down? Are you fucking kidding me? Who are you people anyway?”

“Commander Shepard.” Kaidan’s voice was smooth and soft with just a hint of gravel and it hesitated for just a beat when she whipped her head around to see him appear from behind a stack of crates spattered with dirt and blood. “You’re looking at a legend, Delan.” His throat moved as he swallowed. “And a ghost.”

“Kaidan!”

His name slipped past her lips in a desperate rush. She stared as the mechanic kept swearing behind her as Garrus subtly shifted him away. Stood and tried to absorb the golden brown eyes, the hint of crow’s feet at the edges, the darker five o’clock shadow against his warm skin. The broad shoulders. Trying to superimpose that image over her last memory; on the crew deck just before she turned away to run for Joker. 

The comfort of a faint prickle of static washed over her. 

He closed the distance between them and for half a second, she was in his arms; she was home and _he’s fine he’s fine it was a fucking nightmare_. He smelled like sweat and fear and gun oil and the faintest hint of that crisp aftershave and she had to bite her lip and swallow hard to keep all of it from swelling up, spilling out. His breath hitched and she curled her fingers into the edges of his armor.

For half a second, she was in her body and quiet and…

 _Safe_.

But the nightmare just kept rolling -the hanging smoke in the air, the burning scent of husk ash and the acrid smell of Collectors, the pounding in her ears, the acid boiling up in her throat- when they pushed apart.

And...she couldn’t let him wake her up. That fucking picture. The Illusive Man’s oily voice on his name. She squared her shoulders.

“I wish we had time for a reunion. We’ve called in reinforcements. You should have back up within the hour, some help to figure out…”

She dropped off as his hands lifted, as he interrupted. “Shepard, I thought...You were _dead_.”

“Yeah. Uh. It’s a long story. Cerberus is trying to take the fight to the Reapers. They brought me back to do it.” _was i...was i really god how_

She _felt_ him recoil, could feel the tug in her gut, and Jack grunted behind her as charge built up around him. Liara had always said he felt like walking into a welding torch in the dark when he was worked up.

“ _Cerberus_.” He hissed. “So the reports...they’re true, you’re working for them?”

He jerked back, one, two steps...his reaction to his own anger. She knew the way he’d clenched his jaw. She needed more than anger, though. Anger would fizzle, he’d keep trying. She needed him to believe it might not be her. 

Forcing herself to stop staring, stop herself from breathing in his existence like it was oxygen, _he’s safe he’s safe_ her eyes skittered past his face and she angled her face, so the fissures in her skin would stretch and catch the light. “Yup.”

His eyes lingered on her jaw. “They could be lying to you, telling you it’s Reapers just to get you working with them.”

That voice of reason, almost soothing. Pleading. And right. _Probably._

She dug in, blocking him from that protective instinct. “You’re letting your emotions, your prejudice about Cerberus, get in the way here.” It was a fucking terrible thing to say to him. She knew it. Her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth as she tried to get the words out crisply.

“Shepard, I lo..” He visibly stopped himself, regrouped and she could feel it, like a brick wall slamming down. “How can you… After everything they did?” Hurt lanced through his eyes. _God._

“Kaidan…I know it’s hard to believe, but...” Garrus. He was gonna try and buddy up with him and she needed Kaidan fucking angry. 

She barked out, “The Alliance betrayed me.” Sharp as a slap and she watched his cheeks flush. “Us- all of humanity -by falling in with the Council. Cerberus is our only chance.” There was the tiniest spark of blue in his eyes and the victory ran like ice down her spine as she kept her eyes locked on the blood spatter across the crates behind him. “I’m going to stop the Reapers, no matter what I have to do to get it done, no matter who I have to work with. You do what you have to.”

It took him several heartbeats to answer her and she felt each one throb in her burning, dry eye sockets. 

“I know where my allegiances lie. Even if you’ve...for..forgotten.” And he turned his back on her and it took the last ounce of will she had to to keep her back straight from the gutshot of the crack in his voice. He staggered to a stop, threw over his shoulder as if he couldn’t stop himself, either, “Be careful.”

The memory of that damned picture on her desk kept her still, while she bled out. _He’s got to leave, he’s got to. You won’t get him._ She stood, staring for a moment as he disappeared beyond a stack of crates leaned up against a building, late afternoon light gleaming off of his rifle.

She dug her teeth into the inside of her cheek until blood flooded her mouth.

The buzz in her ears faded enough for her to hear Garrus trying to get her attention, to catch when Jack staggered to her feet and Massani pushed away from the pallet he was using as a brace.

“Joker…” She managed to choke out the request for the shuttle.

“Shuttle’s on its way, Commander. I’ve alerted the Alliance; they should have a ship inbound within the hour. Hang...uh, stand by.”

She boarded the shuttle in silence, helping Jack to the bench and dropping to the floor. She opened her omni, for the excuse.

Garrus sat gingerly on the backseat and looked her over, the visor spiraling out information. He glanced to the side and reached out to pry open a bent pauldron for Massani and then dropped his attention to his rifle as if he wasn’t sure what to say.

In minutes, Aedan was standing in a daze as the elevator crawled towards the conference room to report to The Illusive Man. She took a deep breath as the scan crossed her vision, barely managing to blank her expression before the light show ended.

She shrugged a few times while he gloatingly covered the data they’d pulled. Only to have to stop herself from growling when he turned the conversation to “I trust you’ve taken care of any personal business.”

She lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t have personal business. I just hit the ground and fight. That’s why you needed me, right?”

He took another drag from the cigarette. “Miranda seems to think you'd prefer other biotics to work with. There’s another set of dossiers you might want to consider.”

“Sure. Anything else?” 

“Good work down there, Shepard.”

The hint of praise tried to filter past the roar in her ears and she let a smile flicker across her face. “Yeah. Thanks.”

The armory was directly in front of her as she slouched out of the conference room. There was a modified Carnifex laying out on the workbench and after she automatically reassembled it she hoisted a case of clips under one arm for good measure, ignoring the burn in her shoulder.

“Commander, I’ve got the after action reports, if you...Shepard?” Jacob broke off, startled, as she stalked past him. 

She thought about telling him her aim was off, making an excuse, but she settled for a glare and kept moving. The target range in the cargo bay beckoned. A target and enough gunfire to block out the noise in her head. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus settles into the Normandy. And worries.

It was, after all, a Cerberus vessel- a human vessel- and Garrus knew they hadn’t been expecting him, so he was pleasantly surprised when the ship’s cook had a hot dextro meal prepared for him and a section of the cupboard already marked off. 

The ship’s cook, Gardner, gruffly told him, “Commander’s orders. I checked with Dr. Chakwas to be sure.” 

Of course. Shepard would recall that they’d had to fly back to the Citadel two hours after they’d left to restock after he and Tali had unexpectedly joined up. 

Shepard wasn’t anywhere to be found, now. He could ask the ship’s AI but...no, he was going to need a little while to get used to _that_.The crew seemed receptive but they weren’t offering to deal him into the card game, either. So he ate quickly and headed back to the battery.

He wanted to be of use. 

Spirits knew he'd been fairly useless for the last month, outside of creating job openings for gang members. He’d dropped his gear and settled into the battery, earlier before setting up a cot and starting diagnostics. 

Now, he watched them run for a minute and then glanced back towards the door.

None of this was right. He’d already sent off coded packets to Tali and another to T’soni, hoping one of them could shed a little more light on the situation. Shepard had simply shrugged and told him she didn’t really understand it, how Cerberus had found her. What they’d done to rebuild her. 

He wasn’t ready to push knowing that she’d push back.

But there’s at least one person aboard he could ask.

A minute later he was in the elevator. He hadn’t spent much time in the CIC on the first Normandy; he remembered a cramped efficient turian style map projector and human style stations surrounding the approach to the cockpit. 

This, like everything else on the SR2, was strangely open and cheerfully lit as an office block in the Presidium. He’d already had to create a new ship setting for the visor to keep it from flaring every time he enters a new space. The ship’s yeoman….Kelly? Smiled brightly at him and he almost needed to dial the visor down another notch. 

“Mr. Vakarian! Can I call you Garrus?”

He answered hesitantly, the bandages still slurring his speech. “Uh...Garrus is fine.” 

It was not possible her smile got wider, but it did. It was disconcerting. He's suddenly reminded of the conversation he’d had with Wrex and Ashley down in the cargo bay when she’d told him about how only humans bared their teeth in friendship, among Earth’s mammals. 

And sometimes it was a lie.

Shepard thought this woman was dangerous, warned him. Garrus thinks she’s right. He’d met a few human psych-ops in his time. This one was either really bad or so good at seeming obvious, it’d put you off your guard thinking she couldn’t be that stupid.

She moved forward, her hands spread like a salesperson at a car lot. “Can I show you the CIC? I know you were aboard the SR1 but…”

“As long as the cockpit is still in the same place, I’m fine. Thank you, Ms. Chambers.”

“Oh, call me Kelly.” And that little drop in her voice? Yeah. _No._

Garrus tried to keep his walk nice and slow as he ran away.

He found Joker in the middle of a spat with the AI’s display. 

“Shepard,what do..” Joker caught the reflection in his display and broke off his appeal for support. “Oh, hey Garrus. Feeling better? Come to help me wage war against the overlord?”

“Something like that.” He eyed the display and decided to ignore it. Tali would lose her mind. “Were you expecting Shepard?”

“Not really. She only checks in after...well, only when she has to. I don’t think the view is doing much for her, these days.” 

He was not ready to tackle the way Joker trailed off, yet. So he tried for humor, “Well, Joker, you look the same to me, but I was never good at deciding which Earth creature you were trying to camouflage as behind all that fur.”

“Ha. Ha. It’s hair, Garrus. I’m a human we don’t have fur.” 

“If you say so. No, I’m just looking things over, thought I’d come say thanks, again.”

Garrus could feel the engines shift beneath his feet as Joker slid his hands quickly across the control panel. “Well, it was either that or let Shepard stew on the front step of the medbay and I was due for a scan, anyway. “ 

He wanted to ask how Joker got here, why it’s just him and Chakwas, where the rest of the crew is if they’re going after Reapers. He settled for, “Have you heard from anyone else on the SR1?”

“Uh...Shepard ran into Tali, about three weeks back right after she woke up. No one else though.” 

“Tali didn’t want to come with?”

“I, uh. I don’t think Shepard asked.” 

The AI chimed in, “Tali’Zorah vas Neema was not requested to join the SR2 crew. She implied prior knowledge of Cerberus’ activity and warned the Commander to “be careful.””

Both of them turned to look at the AI display. “Shepard didn’t ask?” 

“She didn’t want me to come, either.” Garrus murmured. 

“Yeah.” Joker made another slight adjustment to one of his myriad controls. “Hey, Garrus...I…”

“Yeah, I think I’m glad I’m here, too.” 

Chambers leaned into their space and Garrus twitched in surprise, backing towards the AI display. “There is a communication from the Illusive Man, Mr. Moreau.”

“Yeah, why tell me?”

“The commander won’t answer my comm.” Kelly’s smile dimmed a watt or two. 

“She muted comms?” He clicked the line, “uh, Hey, Commander? The Illusive Man wants to speak with you.”

There was a pause before she answered, sharply. “Why?”

He rolled his eyes at the yeoman. “Didn’t tell me. I’m just relaying the message.”

“Copy.” the line clicked dead. Garrus wondered if it was some peculiarity to the new ship communications that made her voice sound hollow. 

“He’s never called us before, maybe I’m going to get to do more than play glorified cabbie” Joker mused.

“I’ll go check my gun.” Garrus waited for Kelly to back up enough to brush by and headed back to more familiar climes.

Garrus lost count of how many times she fired the pistol. By the time the cargo bay goes silent; hours after they’d returned from Horizon, she’s got her heat sink switch down to a fraction of a second. He wasn’t that fast. No one was.

The door to the bay was locked. A few minutes after she disappeared, Joker got a voice message to head for the Imir system after refueling. She was still aboard. Still breathing. She acknowledged his estimated arrival time and the pistol fired again. And just didn’t stop.

She must have used the maintenance tube to avoid them, climbing the four decks to her cabin after the gunfire ended. The next time he saw her a half hour later, Shepard’s tucked in neatly to a Cerberus uniform and her boots gleam as she prowls across the mess hall, her eyepaint sharp and black as her boots. The dark red hair damp and slicked back from her forehead. He tried not to stare at the venomous glow of the scars that looked like they'd opened a little wider across the ridge of her brow.

“You ready to go again?” She halted in front of him, not quite at ease.

Garrus starts to ask why she’d lied to Alenko. To Kaidan. But he knew her well enough to know he wouldn’t find out. She’s turn it back on him somehow so he settled for, “Why exactly are we out here? Korlus is pretty far off the beaten path, even for the Terminus system.”

“Picking up another scientist to help Solus with his research. This one’s supposed to have the inside track on Collectors, worked with them on some special biology project.” She dropped a datapad in front of him, “Here’s your trivia for the day. He’s krogan.”

“A krogan...scientist?”

“Apparently.” 

“Galaxy still has a few surprises, I guess.” 

“Guess so.” Yeah, the hollowness of her voice wasn’t the comm system but it was gone when she added, “EDI, ping Lawson and tell her she’s coming along.”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Lawson?”

For a second, he’s not sure she’s going to explain herself but she twitches a shoulder and says, “Jack’s down for the count. I want a biotic for crowd control and she’s not a bad hand with tech if we come across something medical.”

Whatever Shepard was struggling with aboard the Normandy, it didn’t affect her once she’d dropped off the shuttle. Same efficient battle technique, same relentless forward movement, same cool trigger finger. Zaeed rounded out the squad, again, as much as Chakwas had wanted him sidelined. The krogan scientist was in a Blue Suns camp and Zaeed was insistent that he could give good feedback.

An injured merc just inside the compound called off the investigating squads for a promise of medigel and didn't have time to sound an alarm when her pistol came up.

Lawson and Massani didn’t even blink as they walked past the body. Garrus found himself caught in a vivid flashback to her hand on his gun, standing in front of Saleon, her calming low voice in his ear. And the fast shot off her hip when Saleon turned on them, anyway, Alenko’s biotics pinning the salarian in place. 

It had mattered. It had mattered that she gave him a chance.

But not today? 

Garrus had to shake his head to clear the memory and follow them to the next cover.

Massani did have some insight into positioning that Shepard took in with nods, adjusting her scope for the longer shots to catch the mercs in light armor up on bridges while Garrus concentrated on the heavy shielding of the Blue Sun commanders.

It all felt like an exercise, routine and straight forward as they advanced through the krogan lines. The one chatty krogan was interesting. She almost sounded like...herself; amused and determined to dig into the krogan’s psyche. 

At least she left him alive. Garrus had his head dropped into his cowl, waiting for a gunshot behind him until she caught up.

Yeah, it was all routine until they ran into an asari on the upper floor of the krogan’s crumbling lair. 

There was a lot Garrus tried to forget about that day on Virmire, but he recalled the asari, Rana Thanoptis, huddled in a lab with apologies and explanations on her lips. 

So did Shepard. She listened to the information about Okeer’s experiment with her head cocked, cool eyes following as the asari paced and explained herself- again- as minutes ticked by. Before she nodded, said “Thanks,” and shot the scientist between wide lavender eyes. 

“Oh my god.” Miranda, a stray datapad held loosely in her hands, stared at Shepard as if they hadn’t just killed their way through the structure.

“Indoctrinated.” She dropped the heat sink and fit a fresh one, tossing Garrus the spares from the pile Thanoptis had cached.

“Are you sure?” This time he needed to ask but he dropped his gaze to the heatsinks as he sorted them into his pack. Like a junior squad member, again, it felt daring to question.

She answered him easily. “One time getting involved in an operation to create krogan foot soldiers that gets tied to the Reapers is bad luck. Twice?” Shepard shrugged, “We don’t have the luxury of coincidence, anymore.” She turned her attention to the wall safe, tucked behind a cabinet. “Check that console for data and let’s move. Sounds like we might be close to Okeer.” 

The main lab was just beyond the door. Okeer was as unsettling as any krogan Garrus had ever met, maybe more so considering how strange it was to see one spouting ideology beyond...well, that wasn’t fair. Wrex had his moments. But philosophy from a krogan? No, that was new. He tried to catch Shepard’s eye, enjoy the moment a little but she’s target locked on Okeer as he reminisced about Virmire like he had the right.

Shepard's voice was icy. “I did what was necessary to stop Saren, I’m not making apologies for it to you. The bottom line is I need information about the Collectors.” 

Okeer smiled, “But I have no quarrel. Saren’s horde was weak. As for the Collectors? They are...strange. They offer a great resource, if you are willing to pay the price.”

“And the price was?” 

“Many krogan.” He paused. “Everything I have is yours, if you give me and my creation passage.” 

Shepard was about to shake on it when Jedore screamed into the comms that she'd destroy Okeer’s work and start over. 

The krogan lumbered towards the window. “She’s destroying what she can’t control. If she destroys my specimen, there will be no deal Shepard.”

She sprinted for the door. 

Krogan brawlers, sure. Crazy merc with a grenade launcher, why not? 

The heavy mech seemed a *little* like overkill to Garrus. 

He heard her in his ear. “Get Jedore down, first. She’s the one with the kill switches.” He dropped to a knee in the alcove of the door while Miranda dashed past him to the next cover, Massani behind her with suppressing fire, following their own orders and focusing on the mech. 

Shepard was a ghost. The first two krogan halted assault charges as she materialized beside them and backpedalled, leading them into the grenade she’d set to fire just as they approached. The light sniper rifle she’d modded within an inch of its tolerance barked from beyond them. 

Jedore’s shields sputtered out. His headshot was perfect and he couldn’t help a small crow of self-approval.

There was a huff of a laugh in his comm and he turned to look for her.

The mech exploded before he’d taken a cleansing breath, Shepard readjusting her omnitool’s reading as she walked back to them through the burning debris.

They didn’t get a moment to reconnoiter before the alarms started wailing. Shepard hauled around and took off up the stairs, leaving them to follow.

“There are toxins in the laboratory, Shepard. Proceed with caution.” EDI warned them. 

“Check your seals.” she ordered, trying to crack the holo’s locking mechanism.

Okeer’s voice message filled the room as they entered. A last testament requesting...ordering her to protect his legacy.

“Bioengineered krogan.” Garrus stared at the tank as Shepard scrolled through the data. “Not a cure for the genophage though. Just...a different way of breeding, going around it?”

Miranda looked over her shoulder. “Do you have any idea what you’re looking at?” Shepard downloaded the data as Miranda continued to explain Cerberus’ creative encouragement of theft of unique technology, finishing with, “Cerberus pays a handsome finder’s fee for specimens.” 

“Cerberus and the Collectors have that in common.” Shepard eyed Lawson who raised her hands and backed away. “Joker, send the shuttle.” 

In another time and place, he’d have sent that sort of information to CSEC, both the existence of the krogan specimen and Cerberus’ thefts. Now?

He just followed Shepard towards the shuttle. 

They laid their weapons out on the cart Taylor kept to haul it all up to the armory after every outing. Garrus wanted to argue for a temporary armory table in the cargo space but he just wasn’t comfortable yet. 

The krogan’s life pod...creche? Wheeled past them by a Cerberus crew member he hadn’t been introduced to. 

A few minutes later, gear stowed, Shepard was still quietly contemplating as Jacob and Miranda argued past her in the conference room. 

He tried to recall a similar incident aboard the SR1...maybe after Liara came on board and Ashley and Kaidan had been arguing over whether or not she was in league with Benezia But in that case, Shepard had been looking for input into a baffling situation, she listened to each argument, picked out details. Clarified positions. Participated.

Now, the argument seemed...outside of her. 

It swirled around her as she stared at the pod on the haptic display and then shrugged and left the conference room silently, with Miranda shouting behind her, “Why would you take that risk?” Frustrated, Lawson turned to him. As if he had _answers_. “Is this typical behavior?”

“For Shepard?” He stopped to think, not sure exactly how to answer. He wanted to cover for her. Shepard has locked on this woman as another enemy. She seems to be surrounded. 

“Yes, of course for Shepard. This is a reckless choice and I need to know if…” Lawson clipped the end of her sentence off, her mouth twisting in a way that usually indicated a human was trying to avoid a thought.

Garrus cut his speculation short. “Shepard’s always been partial to the krogan, she gets along with them. And this team _is_ long on lightweight speed but short on heavies. Makes sense she’s willing to take the risk.”

Taylor nodded. “See, Miranda, Shepard isn’t being reckless. She just doesn’t want to explain herself. Good thing you joined up, we’ve needed someone who knows how she operates on the ground.” He added to Garrus, nodding respectfully before he left the room. 

“Yeah.” 

Shepard came back up from the Engineering deck half an hour later, with a familiar looseness in her body as Garrus tried to finish an attempt at a meal he was sure he used to like.

“So we’ve got a krogan.” She thumbed a drying smear of blood from above the sharp grin and wiped it on the black pants of her Cerberus uniform. 

“Are you…”

She waved him off. “Yeah, m’fine, he’s just a little enthusiastic.” She poured a cup of coffee and swigged it back, steam still curling off of the liquid. “I got a heads up about some Blue Suns swarming over some sort of prothean site. Wanna go check it out and see how our new tank works in the field?” 

Gardner slid her a bowl of something with a reddish brown sauce and she nodded her thanks, and brought the dishes to where Garrus was seated, hooking the chair out with her foot.

“We can. You don’t want to run him through some simulations, first?” 

“Says he’s tired of fake stuff. He’s had battle drills, i guess, downloaded into his head. Between you, me and...Jack, we can probably cover for anything that he can’t deal with. Doc says Massani’s out until he finishes his physical.”

“If you say so. We’ve been running pretty hard. Don’t you...you need to rest, first?” 

She tilted her head and swallowed her bite before repeating. “Eh, I’m fine. Joker says it’ll be three hours or so before we make the relay. I’ll catch some. And then we’re heading to Illium, so that’s all asari spas and shopping, right?” 

“Riiight.” His agreement made her chuckle, at least.

They ate in companionable quiet for a while as Garrus turned over the idea of Illium in his head. That was Liara’s last address. She hadn’t returned his email, though. 

He looked up to find Shepard watching him spearing the last cube of meat in his dish and cast around for something to say. “Those.. uh, those new mods seem to work. That etched barrel got you some more power.”

“Got that mech down pretty quick,” she agreed. “Need to pick up something sturdier, though.” She focused in on him, the large grey eyes cool and opaque. “You square?”

It took him a beat to place the idiom and nod. “I’m fine, Shepard. I’ll finish the alignment on those new guns before we land.” 

“Mmmhmm.” 

They sat in silence, the crew chatter ebbing around them as more people filtered in. Someone laughed across the table, maybe one of the CIC staff and Garrus tried to keep his expression neutral when her shoulders hunched at the bright sound. Her chair scraped back and Shepard picked up her bowl and drank the last bit away before stalking off to the lounge.

He watched her go. 

_I’m fine._

He expected she believed him almost as much as he believed her. 


End file.
